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Dessert

Custard Cake

A baked cake with a sweet custard filling made from eggs, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Custard 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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the 3 eggs and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk, and mix until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into shallow pans and bake until golden.

Make the custard filling

  1. For the filling, bring 1 quart of milk to a boil and sweeten it.

  2. In a bowl, beat the 4 yolks and mix with a little cold milk and corn starch.

  3. Stir the yolk mixture into the boiling milk and continue stirring until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat, add the walnut-sized butter, and flavor with vanilla.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Add structure to the cake and richness to the custard through their proteins and yolks.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the cake and richness to the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake batter when mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk mixture into the boiling milk. The yolks and starch can scramble or form lumps if added too fast or without constant stirring. Keep stirring while the mixture thickens so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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