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Dessert

Washington Cream Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, topped with a sweet milk, egg, flour, sugar, butter 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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, stirring until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. For the cream, combine the sweet milk, eggs, flour, and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

  2. Once cooked, remove from heat and stir in the butter.

  3. Spread the cream between the layers of cake as you would jelly.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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, when cooked, set the cream to a thick custard.
Flour
Provides structure to the cake and thickens the cream as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and cream and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake and smoothness to the cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. Eggs and flour must be stirred over heat until the starch thickens and the egg proteins set. Undercooked cream stays runny and can taste of raw flour or egg, while overcooking can cause the eggs to scramble.

“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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