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Dessert

Whipped Cream Cake

A light cake made with butter, eggs, flour, and sweetened with sugar, finished with whipped sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Whipped Cream Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Whipped 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and soft butter.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and flavoring.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Mix the cream of tartar and baking soda into the flour, then sift it into the batter and fold in gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a small dripping pan and bake until golden.

  2. Once the cake is cool, whip the sweet cream until stiff and spread it over the cake.

  3. For easier whipping, chill the cream before use.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the cake its light, airy structure, and yolks add richness and tenderness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter's structure as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, stabilising the foam and reacting with baking soda to aid rising.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the crumb while creaming with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a tender texture in the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the batter. Stiff egg whites trap air that makes the cake rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the foam leaves a dense, flat cake.

“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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