Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Cake

A light cake made with sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, egg whites, sweet milk, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, mixing well.

Finish the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk until combined.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cover and fill the layers with whipped cream.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, so the cake rises.
Egg whites
Whipped foam lightens the batter and adds structure as it sets.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Gently folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, so the cake rises less and turns out denser.

“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.

More cream cake recipes

Ice 127Sour 42Almond 41Whipped 36Boston 35French 34 See all 226 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes