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Dessert

Custard Cakes

Custard cakes are sweet baked cakes with a custard filling.

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

Custard Cakes

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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and eggs. Mix until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into round pie tins, filling them halfway.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, combine 1 cup of milk and cornstarch in a saucepan. Heat until thickened.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk and lemon flavoring. Let it cool.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown. Allow the cakes to cool slightly.

  2. Spread plenty of custard between the two cakes to assemble.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cakes set and hold together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to add sweetness and help create a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to leaven the batter and balance its flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.

The step that matters

Heat the custard until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred constantly; undercooked custard stays thin and runny. Adding the egg yolk after removing it from heat avoids scrambling it.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, cream, flour, egg. 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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