Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓
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
Break the eggs into a cup and fill it with cream.
In a bowl, combine the eggs and cream with sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.
Mix until smooth and add lemon flavoring.
Bake and fill
Bake in layers at 350°F (175°C).
Once cooled, layer the cake with lemon custard.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 moisture, helping the batter set and hold its shape in the oven.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking, making the layers rise and become light.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and fat, giving the cake a softer, richer crumb.
The step that matters
Mix until smooth. Mixing only until the batter is smooth keeps it tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, sugar, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, flour. 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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