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Dessert

Layer Cakes

A layered cake with a hickory nut custard between the layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nuts are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Layer Cakes

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.

Prepare the cake layers

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and lemon flavoring.

  3. Bake the mixture in jelly pans.

Make the custard

  1. In a tin pan, heat milk in boiling water.

  2. Dissolve cornstarch in a little milk and add to the boiling milk.

  3. Whisk in eggs and sugar, then stir in chopped hickory nuts.

  4. Pour the custard between the warm layers of 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. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  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
Forms the structure of the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas so the cake layers rise and stay light.
Milk
Adds moisture and, when heated, thickens into the custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk so the custard holds its body.
Eggs
Set with heat to give the custard structure and richness.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the custard filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard. Cornstarch must be dissolved in a little cold milk first and then added to the boiling milk, which keeps it from clumping. Eggs whisked in too hot can scramble, so the custard should be stirred gently and kept below a hard boil.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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