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Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with butter, flour, eggs, and cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Pour boiling water over butter in a bowl.

  2. Add flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Set aside to cool.

  4. Add eggs and mix well.

  5. Add a pinch of baking soda.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking pan.

  2. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture into the pan.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, bring milk to a boil.

  2. Whisk in flour, sugar, and eggs until thickened.

  3. Flavor with lemon or vanilla extract.

Assemble

  1. Remove tops from cooled cakes.

  2. Fill hollows with cream.

  3. Replace tops.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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
Provide structure and help the mixture set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that tenderizes the cakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cakes and thickens the cream.
Milk
Adds moisture and body to the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning.
Baking soda
Helps the cakes rise and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Whisk the flour, sugar, and eggs into the boiling milk until thickened. Eggs and starch thicken as they heat, but overheated egg proteins can curdle and leave lumps. Whisking constantly spreads the heat evenly and keeps the cream smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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