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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet milk and corn starch filling, baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

French 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 layers

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and water. Mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  5. Add the sifted mixture to the batter.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites and vanilla extract.

  7. Pour the batter into layers.

  8. Bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, heat the sweet milk and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, eggs, and dissolved corn starch.

  3. Cook until thick.

  4. Spread the filling between the cooled layers.

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 + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vanilla + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake and fat to the filling.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift when folded in, and yolks and whole eggs help bind and thicken the batter and filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and become light.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling and helps the layers brown.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Corn starch only thickens once it is heated enough for its granules to swell and gelatinize. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that will not hold between the layers, while overcooking can make it stiff or cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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