Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 cake
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.
Sift together the flour and baking powder, then fold into the egg mixture.
Gently mix in the sweet cream.
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.
Fill and finish
Once cooled, spread the thick sweet cream mixed with pulverized sugar between the layers.
Flavor the cake and cream to your taste.
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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Sugar + creamtop 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 + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Whisked with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, fluffy structure.
- Flour
- Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes tender.
- Sweet cream
- Adds moisture and richness to the batter, keeping the crumb soft.
- Thick sweet cream
- Adds fat and richness to the filling, giving a smooth, spreadable layer.
The step that matters
Fold the flour into the egg mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs. Stirring vigorously deflates the batter, which can leave the cake dense and flat.
“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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