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Dessert

Cream-cake and Chocolate

A layered cake made with a butter and sugar batter, filled with a thickened milk custard, served with chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream-cake and Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  3. Fold in the frothed egg whites alternately with the flour.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly-cake tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, scald 1 cup of milk.

  2. Mix 2 teaspoons of corn-starch with a little cold milk and add to the scalded milk.

  3. Whisk in 1 beaten egg and ½ cup sugar, then return to heat.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens, then let it cool and flavor with vanilla.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the filling between the cooled cake layers.

  2. Serve with a cup of chocolate.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whipped whites give the batter structure and lift as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the cake.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give the cake a fine, tender crumb.
Prepared flour
Provides the main structure of the cake batter once baked.
Corn-starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and forms the base of the cooked filling.

The step that matters

Stir the filling until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil while stirred, so stopping early leaves a thin filling. Stirring also prevents the egg from scrambling on the bottom of the pan.

“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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