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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. 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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, 1½ cups flour, 3 tablespoons water, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and flavoring to taste until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, boil ¾ pint milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 1 egg, 2 tablespoons corn starch, and 3 tablespoons sugar.

  3. Gradually add the mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Let the cream cool and add flavoring to taste.

Assemble

  1. Layer the cream between the baked cake 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 richness to the cake batter as they set when baked.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream as it heats with the milk and egg.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, which thickens when heated.

The step that matters

Gradually add the mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until thickened.. Adding the egg and starch mixture slowly and stirring constantly keeps the egg from scrambling and lets the starch thicken the cream evenly without lumps.

“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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