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Dessert

Cheap Cream Cake

A simple layered cake with a sweet cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. 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.

  3. Divide the batter into three parts and pour into round shallow pans.

  4. Bake until golden brown.

Make the cream and assemble

  1. For the cream, beat 1 egg and ½ cup sugar together.

  2. Add ¼ cup flour and a little milk, then stir this mixture into ½ pint of boiling milk until thick.

  3. Let the cream cool, then spread it between the baked cake layers.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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 layers together as they bake.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter and helps thicken the cream.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the batter rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the batter.
Milk
Supplies moisture to the batter and thickens the cream when heated with flour.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into boiling milk. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid, and adding it too slowly or without stirring can leave lumps or a thin cream. Stir steadily until the mixture thickens before cooling.

“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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