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Dessert

Layer Cream Cake

Layered cake with a lemon‑flavored cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Layer Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat 6 eggs and 2 cups of sugar until well combined.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of water, 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. Mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes.

  6. Let the cake cool.

  7. Cut it in half.

Make the cream filling

  1. Beat 2 eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and ⅓ cup of corn starch together.

  2. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk.

  3. Stir until thickened.

  4. Flavor the cream with the grated rind and juice of a lemon or 1 teaspoon of lemon extract.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream filling between the layers of the cake.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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
Beaten into the batter to give the cake structure and help it rise.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda reacts and lightens the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth, sliceable cream filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.

The step that matters

Pour the cream mixture into the boiling milk. Adding the egg and starch mixture to boiling milk too slowly, or stirring too little, can leave lumps or scrambled egg. Stirring steadily while pouring lets the starch thicken evenly and the eggs cook smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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