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Dessert

Puff Cake

A sponge cake with custard filling, baked and optionally iced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Puff 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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cold water, baking powder, and salt until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into sponge cake pans.

  4. Bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine milk, cornstarch, egg, and a pinch of salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens like custard.

Assemble and serve

  1. Split the baked cakes open with a knife.

  2. Fill the center with the custard filling, ensuring it doesn't spill out.

  3. Optionally, ice the cakes with chocolate dressing for extra flavor.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provide structure and richness as the batter sets and the custard thickens.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Provides the liquid that thickens with cornstarch into the custard filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set custard as it heats.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard filling. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred constantly. Stirring over medium heat prevents scorching and lumps, and the custard must be thick enough to hold its shape inside the cake.

“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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