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 ↓
Custard Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Bake the cake
Bake the angel food cake in two square or oblong pans.
Once cooled, cut the cakes open.
Make the custard
In a saucepan, heat the milk, reserving some to dissolve the corn starch and sugar.
In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch with the reserved milk.
Stir the mixture into the heated milk.
Cook until thickened.
Remove from heat.
Let the custard cool.
Assemble
Spread the cooled custard between the layers of cake.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps keep the yolks from scrambling when heated.
- New milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the flavor.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel in the custard.
The step that matters
Cook until thickened. Corn starch needs to reach a simmer to swell and thicken fully, but overheating can curdle the egg yolks. Cook gently while stirring, and stop once the custard coats a spoon.
“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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