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Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, water, baking powder, sweet milk, corn starch, butter, and flavored with lemon or vanilla, filled with cream.

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.

Prepare the cakes

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

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

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

Make the cream

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs and dissolved corn starch to the boiling mixture.

  3. Stir in butter and cook, stirring quickly to avoid scorching.

  4. Add lemon or vanilla flavoring to taste.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are done, split them open and fill with the cream.

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
Bind the batter and, when beaten into the hot milk, thicken the cream.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked cream.
Sweet milk
Forms the base of the cream, providing moisture and body.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream while it cooks. Milk and sugar scorch easily on the bottom of a pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the starch-thickened cream smooth rather than lumpy or burnt.

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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