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Dessert

Puff Cake

A sponge cake filled with a custard made from milk, cornstarch, egg, and salt, optionally iced with chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. 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 custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, cornstarch, egg, and salt, then cook over medium heat until thickened like custard.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the cakes are baked, split them open with a knife and fill with the custard mixture.

  2. Ice the cakes with chocolate icing if desired.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen cake together.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter set as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cakes rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb and golden colour.
Milk
Adds moisture to the custard filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a custard as it heats.

The step that matters

Cook the custard slowly and stir it. Cornstarch thickens only once the mixture heats fully, and the egg can scramble if the heat is too high, leaving the custard lumpy.

“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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