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 ↓
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.
Add the milk and baking powder, mixing well.
Pour the batter into two cake pans and bake until golden.
Make the filling
For the filling, boil 1½ cups of milk with scant ½ cup sugar.
Thicken the mixture with corn starch, then add a small piece of butter and flavoring.
Beat the filling until nearly cool and spread it between the cake layers.
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
- Eggs
- Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and, beaten with eggs, helps create a light, fluffy batter.
- Milk
- Adds moisture to the batter and forms the base of the custard filling.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become tender.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the filling so it holds its shape between the cake layers.
The step that matters
Beat the filling until nearly cool. Spreading the filling while it is still very hot can make it runny and cause it to slide out between the layers. Beating it as it cools lets it thicken to a spreadable consistency, which the cornstarch helps set.
“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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