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Dessert

Cream Nut Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, cornstarch, walnuts, and a sweet cream mixture.

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

Cream Nut 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the wet mixture.

Make the cream

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk to near boiling.

  2. Stir in 2 teaspoons of cornstarch mixed with cold milk.

  3. Take out a little of the hot milk and mix it with 1 beaten egg, ½ cup sugar, and a little salt.

  4. Return this mixture to the hot milk and boil, stirring constantly.

Assemble and finish

  1. Mix the chopped walnuts with the cream and spread between the cake layers.

  2. Iced the cake and top with half meats.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and thicken the cream when cooked, giving structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the cream sets firm enough to spread.
Walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream after adding the egg mixture. The egg yolks and starch need to be stirred constantly while the custard comes to a boil. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps, and the mixture must thicken fully to set properly between the layers.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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