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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A custard-like cake made with milk, flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon flavoring, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Cream Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cream

  1. Reserve a small amount of sweet milk to mix with the flour and eggs.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk to a boil.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with the reserved milk.

  4. Add the egg yolks and whites to the flour-milk mixture.

  5. Slowly stir this mixture into the boiling milk along with the sugar.

  6. Once almost done, add the butter and lemon flavoring.

Bake and assemble

  1. In a separate bowl, beat 3 eggs with 1 cup of sugar until combined.

  2. Add 1½ cups of flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and cold water to the egg mixture.

  3. Mix until smooth and pour into pie pans.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  5. Split the cakes while warm and spread with the cream mixture.

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 + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites thicken the cream and add structure to the cake batter.
Flour
Provides structure to both the thickened cream and the cake batter.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and cake and helps the batter brown.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg mixture and helps the cake rise with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to help the cakes rise and brown.

The step that matters

Slowly stir the flour-milk mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the flour mixture slowly and stirring constantly keeps it from clumping, so the cream thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, sugar, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, sugar, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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