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Custard Cake

A layered cake with custard filling made from sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, corn starch, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and the beaten egg yolks, mixing well.

  4. Flavor the mixture with lemon or vanilla.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the wet mixture.

  6. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

Bake and make the custard

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

  2. For the custard, bring 2 cups of milk to a boil.

  3. Stir in the corn starch and beaten eggs, then add the sugar and flavoring.

  4. Cook until thickened, then layer the custard between the warm 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Butter
Adds fat that creates a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air to lift and structure the cake.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and emulsifying fat to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred. Undercooked custard stays thin and runs between the cake layers.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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