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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A cake made with flour, eggs, sugar, sour cream, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the baking soda into the flour.

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the sour cream and softened butter to the egg mixture and mix until smooth.

  4. Gradually incorporate the flour mixture until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into thin cakes and cut with a tumbler or cookie cutter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough and cakes together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to help the cakes rise and brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and promotes golden browning in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderizing the crumb and activating the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and carries flavor through the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Dough rolled too thick bakes unevenly, leaving centers doughy while edges over-brown. Even thickness lets the cakes bake through and turn golden at the same time.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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