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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk and corn starch cream filling.

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 ↓

French Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream filling

  1. Boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little milk and set aside.

  3. In a bowl, combine the egg whites, egg yolk, and sugar.

  4. Once the milk boils, slowly pour in the corn starch mixture while stirring continuously until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Make and assemble the cake

  1. For the cake, beat the eggs and mix with sugar, flour, baking powder, and cold water.

  2. Bake the cake in layers until golden.

  3. Spread the cream filling between the layers and flavor to taste.

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. 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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, and help the cake set and hold its layers.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth cream filling as it heats.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the cream filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and cream, and helps keep the crumb tender.

The step that matters

Pouring the corn starch into the boiling milk. Stirring constantly while pouring in the starch keeps it dispersed so it does not form lumps or scorch on the base. The starch thickens as it heats, so the cream sets smoothly.

“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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