Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Coffee Cream Cake
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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Beat the eggs thoroughly, then add the sugar and continue beating for 15 minutes.
Mix the two flours with the salt, then gradually add to the egg mixture while beating well.
Butter five or six sandwich tins of the same size and dust them with caster sugar.
Bake and fill
Pour a thin layer of batter into each tin and bake for about 10 minutes.
Once baked, turn each cake out onto a sheet of paper sprinkled with caster sugar.
For the filling, add icing sugar to the cream and beat until stiff, then flavor with coffee essence.
Spread a layer of cream between each sponge layer and sprinkle caster sugar on the top layer, or ice the whole cake with coffee icing and decorate as desired.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the sponge its light structure.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch and gluten that set the sponge structure as it bakes.
- Caster sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the beaten eggs.
- Heavy cream
- Whipped to stiff peaks to form a rich, moist filling between the layers.
The step that matters
Beating the eggs and sugar. Beating the eggs thoroughly with sugar creates the foam that gives the sponge its lift. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the flour must be folded in gently so the trapped air is not lost.
“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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