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Dessert

Custard Cream Cake

A layered cake with a custard cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Custard 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix sugar, melted butter, milk (or water), cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour until smooth. Add eggs and mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, heat ½ pint of milk to boiling.

  2. Stir in 2 teaspoons of cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Take out a small amount of the mixture and gradually mix it with beaten eggs and sugar.

  4. Return the egg mixture to the pot, stirring constantly until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Once cool, flavor the custard and spread it between the cooled cake 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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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
Bind the batter and, with cornstarch, thicken the custard.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Cream of tartar and baking soda
React together to lighten the batter so the cake rises.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it holds its shape between the layers.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake.

The step that matters

Returning the egg mixture to the pot. Eggs can scramble if they meet hot milk too quickly. Tempering with a little hot mixture first, then stirring constantly over heat, lets the custard thicken smoothly as the egg proteins set gently.

“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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