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Dessert

Filling for Cream Cake

A sweet cream filling for cakes made with sweet cream, corn starch, sugar, egg, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Filling for Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Place the cream in a small saucepan and set it in another pan with boiling water.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk and stir it into the cream.

  3. Cook until it boils for 2 minutes, then add the sugar.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with a spoonful of cold milk and stir it in.

Finish and fill

  1. Remove from heat and beat the egg whites with ½ teaspoon of sugar until stiff, then fold them in.

  2. Add the vanilla extract and let it cool before filling the cakes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Sweet cream
Provides the rich, fluid base that the filling sets from.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the filling body.
Egg
Yolks add richness and thickening; whipped whites lighten the filling.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Yolks can scramble if they meet a very hot mixture. Adding them off the boil and stirring steadily lets them thicken the filling smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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