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Dessert

Cream-cakes

A layered cake with a custard filling between the batter layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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-cakes

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

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, milk, eggs, lemon extract, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together 2 eggs, ½ cup sugar, and 1 tablespoon cornstarch.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook until thickened.

  5. Stir in the butter until melted and smooth.

Assemble

  1. Let the custard cool, then spread it between the baked 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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, and adds richness and tenderness to the cake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter, and thicken the custard when heated.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as it heats with the milk.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard after adding the hot milk. Stirring constantly keeps the eggs from scrambling when the hot milk is added. Cooking until thickened lets the starch swell and set the custard into a smooth filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg. 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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