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Dessert

French Cream Cake

A light cake with a sweet pineapple-flavored filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

French 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve the cornstarch in a little milk.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 1 pint of sweet milk to a boil.

  3. Stir in the dissolved cornstarch, egg yolks, sugar, and butter.

  4. Cook until thickened, then let cool.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake and flavor with pineapple.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, they give the batter lift and an airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it cooks so it sets smoothly.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is cooked long enough, so stopping early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking with egg yolks can scramble them.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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