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Dessert

Custard or Cream Cake

A layered cake with a custard filling made from eggs, milk, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Custard or Cream Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk, then add the dissolved baking soda mixture to the batter.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them into the batter.

  4. Stir the cream of tartar into the sifted flour, then quickly add the flour mixture to the batter.

Bake the cake

  1. Bake the batter in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) in layers like a jelly cake.

Make the custard

  1. Heat 2 cups of sweet milk in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. Mix the cornstarch or flour with ½ cup sugar and a little cold milk, then add the yolks of 4 eggs to the mixture.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Set the custard aside to cool.

  5. Add vanilla or lemon for flavor.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff froth to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and helps keep the cake's texture fine.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cake.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to its texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Stirring the yolk mixture into boiling milk and cooking it fully lets the starch gelatinize and the yolks set, giving a smooth thick custard. Undercooking leaves it thin, while overheating can curdle the yolks.

“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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