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Dessert

Custard Cake

A cake made with a custard mixture layered into batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Custard 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat 3 eggs and mix in 1 cup of sugar until well combined.

  3. Add 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of melted butter, 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar, and ½ teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons of milk. Mix until smooth.

Make the custard and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat 1 egg with ½ cup of sugar and flavor with lemon.

  2. Stir in 1/3 cup of flour until well combined.

  3. Layer the custard mixture into the cake batter and bake until set.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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
Provide structure and set the custard as they cook.
Flour
Provides structure by setting with the eggs as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for rising.

The step that matters

Layering the custard into the batter. Custard is much wetter than the cake batter, so it can sink or blend in rather than staying as a distinct layer if poured too heavily or mixed in. Pouring gently keeps the two layers separate while they bake and set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, cream, milk. 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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