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Dessert

Golden Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from egg yolks, corn starch, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Golden 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 batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk and beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Sift in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar, and mix until combined.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the batter into 3 deep jelly tins and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. For the cream filling, beat the egg yolks and add corn starch, sugar, sweet milk, and a small lump of butter.

  2. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick, then let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cooled filling between the layers of cake and flavor to your liking.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped into the batter to add lift and structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's shape as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling when cooked and add richness to the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream filling as it cooks in the double boiler.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream filling in a double boiler. Starch-thickened and egg-yolk fillings can scorch or turn grainy if heated too fast. Gentle, steady heat lets the starch swell and the yolks thicken smoothly into a stable cream.

“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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