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Dessert

Cream Filling for Cakes

A sweet milk-based filling made with corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cream Filling for Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, moisten the corn starch with a little milk.

  3. Stir the moistened corn starch, eggs, and sugar into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook until nearly done.

Finish the filling

  1. Add the butter and flavor to taste.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer mouthfeel and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and softens its flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch clumps if added dry or too fast. Moistening it first in a little milk lets the starch disperse evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy.

“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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