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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk and flour filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Cake

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.

Make the cake batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix together sugar, sweet milk, egg, butter, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Divide the batter evenly into three shallow cake tins.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, heat 1 cup of milk to boiling.

  2. Stir in ¼ cup of sugar and 1 dessertspoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg and boil until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the baked cake layers.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake crumb and filling together.
Egg
Adds structure and helps thicken the filling as it sets with heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and thickens the filling when heated with flour.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling until thickened. Flour starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, and the beaten egg can curdle if overheated. Stirring constantly while it cooks keeps the filling smooth and properly set.

“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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