Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Cake

A cake made with bananas, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. 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 cake

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

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

  3. Add the egg and essence of vanilla, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the creamed mixture.

  5. Stir in the milk until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.

Top and finish

  1. While the cake is baking, mash the bananas with a fork and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Once the cake is cooked, top it with the mashed bananas.

  3. Whip the heavy cream until stiff and spread it over the entire cake.

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. Vanilla + bananatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 as the cake sets.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiffness, it forms a rich, airy topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the heavy cream until stiff. Cream under-whipped stays runny and slides off the cake, while over-whipped cream turns grainy and can separate as fat particles clump together.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesBanana FillingBanana Filling16 recipesBanana SherbetBanana Sherbet10 recipesBanana FloatBanana Float9 recipes