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Dessert

Cream Cake

A baked cake topped with a sweet custard made from milk, cornstarch, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  3. Add sugar, flour, cold water, and baking powder; mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, bring the sweet milk to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix cornstarch, 1 egg, and ½ cup sugar.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add butter and flavoring; mix well.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 add structure and richness to the cake crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown its surface while baking.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard when heated with the milk, giving it a smooth set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Cornstarch must be heated with the milk until it boils and thickens; stopping too early leaves a thin, starchy custard, while overcooking can scorch the milk or break the texture. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and sticking.

“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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