Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cheap Cream 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1 cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon butter, and 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder until smooth.
Divide the batter into three parts and pour into round shallow pans.
Bake until golden brown.
Make the cream
For the cream, beat 1 egg and 1/2 cup sugar together.
Add 1/4 cup flour and a little milk to the mixture, then stir into 1/2 pint of boiling milk until thick.
Let the cream cool, then spread it between the baked cake layers.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 cake crumb together as it bakes.
- Egg
- Adds structure and richness to the batter and helps thicken the cream.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the batter.
- Sweet milk
- Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid base.
The step that matters
Stir the cream until thick over the heat. Flour must be stirred into the boiling milk so its starch gelatinizes and thickens the cream. If it is not cooked through and stirred, the cream stays thin or tastes of raw flour, and it will not hold between the layers.
“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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