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Dessert

Puff Cake

A layered cake with custard filling and optional chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 cake

  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 a pinch of salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened like custard.

Assemble and finish

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

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

  3. Optionally, ice the cakes with chocolate icing 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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Provides liquid for the custard filling and adds richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and egg mixture into a set custard.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when the mixture reaches a simmer while being stirred. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking can make the egg curdle and turn grainy.

“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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