Skip to main content
Dessert

Iiickoiiy-nut Cake

A cake made with eggs, flour, sugar, cream or butter, baking powder, and a hickory nut cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Iiickoiiy-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

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

  2. Beat together 4 eggs, 2½ cups all‑purpose flour, 2 cups sugar, ½ cup cream or butter, and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  3. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the cream filling

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

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

Assemble

  1. Let the filling cool, then spread it between the cake 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a custard-like filling as it cooks.
Hickory nut meats
Add a rich, nutty flavor and texture to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream filling. Stirring the egg and cornstarch mixture into boiling milk and cooking it until thick sets the custard. Undercooked cornstarch stays starchy and runny, while overcooking can curdle the eggs.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes