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Dessert

Cream Jelly Cake

A layered cake made with a sweet cream batter and jelly between layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cream Jelly Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir flour into 2 cups of sweet cream to make a batter.

  2. Add 4 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup of sugar, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, and spice to taste. Mix well, then add 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in ½ cup of milk.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into buttered tins, filling them no more than ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Bake until done, then layer jelly between each 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 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. Flour + milktop 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the batter as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda for lift.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.

The step that matters

Filling the tins to no more than ⅓ inch thick. Thin layers bake through evenly and rise predictably, while thicker batter can stay raw in the middle or set unevenly before the rising agents finish working.

“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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