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Preserve

Puff Cake

A cake made from a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, and water, baked and filled with a custard made from milk, corn starch, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Puff 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. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cold water, baking powder, and salt until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into sponge cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine milk, corn starch, egg, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens like custard.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the cakes are baked, split them open with a knife.

  2. Fill the center with the custard filling, ensuring it doesn't spill out.

  3. Optionally, ice the cakes with chocolate dressing for extra 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 binding to the batter as it sets during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the sponge cake crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard filling and adds richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a custard as it heats.

The step that matters

Cook the custard filling over medium heat. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred constantly. Stirring prevents scorching and lumps, while the egg also needs gentle heat so it sets smoothly without curdling.

“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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