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Dessert

Custard Cake

A layered cake with a custard filling made from milk, sugar, flour, and cornstarch.

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 ↓

Custard 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 layers

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, sweet milk, flour, egg, baking powder, and butter until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into three layers.

  4. Bake the layers until golden.

Make the custard filling

  1. For the filling, scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In another bowl, combine sugar, flour, and cornstarch.

  3. Add the dry mixture to the scalded milk.

  4. Boil the mixture until thick.

  5. Let the filling cool.

  6. Flavor the filling as desired.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the baked 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 and thickens the filling as it cooks.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the layers and filling and helps the cake brown.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and forms the body of the custard filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it boils, giving it a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until thick. Starch in the flour and cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture boils, and it must be stirred to prevent scorching or lumps. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny.

“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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