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Dessert

Hickory Nut Cake

A layered cake with hickory nut filling and custard cream.

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

Hickory Nut 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.

Prepare the cake layers

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

  2. Beat together 4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, ½ cup butter, 2½ cups flour, and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  3. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. Beat together 2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 2 heaping tablespoons cornstarch, and 1 cup chopped hickory nuts for the cream.

  2. Stir the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk and cook until thick like custard.

Assemble

  1. Let the cream cool, then spread it 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. 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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide structure to the batter and thicken the cream as they set when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream into a smooth custard as it cooks in boiling milk.
Hickory nut meats
Add a nutty flavour and texture to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream. Stirring the egg and cornstarch mixture into boiling milk and cooking it until thick sets the custard. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to reach full thickening, and eggs can curdle if overheated, so keep stirring.

“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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