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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling and assorted dried fruits, including pineapple, cherries, raisins, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Cake

2 layer cakes

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 cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the flour, sweet milk, and baking powder to the butter mixture, mixing well.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Divide the batter into 4 layers and bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, scald 1 pint of sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and flour together, then add to the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the scalded milk, stirring constantly over low heat until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Finish and assemble

  1. Squeeze the juice from the pineapple and finely chop the cherries, ginger, raisins, almonds, and citron.

  2. Add the chopped ingredients to the cooled filling along with 10 drops of bitter almond and vanilla.

  3. Spread the filling thickly between the layers of cake to create 2 layer cakes.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pineapple + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the light cake its airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and stay light.
Egg yolks
Thicken the scalded milk into a custard that holds the fruit filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the scalded milk. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot too fast. Constant stirring over low heat spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

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