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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk and butter filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 layers

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, flour, water, and baking powder.

  3. Divide the batter between two pie tins and bake until done.

  4. Once baked, split the cakes open.

Make the cream filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sweet milk and sugar, and heat until boiling.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and corn starch dissolved in a little milk, stirring quickly.

  3. Add the butter and continue to boil while stirring to prevent scorching.

  4. Flavor with lemon or vanilla as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Add structure to the batter and thicken the cream filling as they set with heat.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep its crumb tender.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream filling as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs and corn starch to the boiling milk. Eggs can scramble and cornstarch can clump if added to hot milk without quick, constant stirring. Cornstarch needs to boil to thicken fully, and stirring keeps the filling smooth and prevents scorching on the pan bottom.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, milk, corn, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, milk, corn, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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