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Dessert

Washington Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk and butter cream 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 ↓

Washington 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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 2 cups of sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ½ cup of sweet milk and 4 eggs, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add 3 cups of flour and 3 teaspoons of baking powder, stirring until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. For the cream filling, combine 1 pint of sweet milk, 3 eggs, and 1 cup of flour in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened, then remove from heat and stir in ½ cup of butter.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are baked and cooled, spread the cream filling between the 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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 set the thickened cream filling as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and thickens the cream filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the cake and the cream filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream filling over low heat. Flour and egg thicken the milk as it heats, but high heat can scorch the milk or curdle the eggs before it smooths out. Stirring steadily over low heat keeps it smooth, and butter is added only after removing it from heat so it stays rich.

“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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