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Dessert

Chicago Dessert Cake

A layered cake made with a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, and milk, topped with a lemon or vanilla flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chicago Dessert 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar and flour.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and baking powder. Mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  5. Divide the batter into two cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, bring 1 cup of milk to a boil.

  2. Mix corn starch with 2 tablespoons of milk until smooth, then add the mixture to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg, sugar, and lemon or vanilla extract until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are cool, layer them with the 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whites trap air when whipped, lifting the batter, and yolks add richness and structure.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once mixed with the wet ingredients and heat sets it.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and, with corn starch, thickens the cream.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream while it thickens. Corn starch must be fully smoothed into cold milk before it meets the boiling milk, otherwise it clumps. Once heated, the starch swells and thickens the cream, so it needs constant stirring to keep it smooth and avoid scorching.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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