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Dessert

Mock Charlotte Russb

A layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, sour milk, sweet milk filling thickened with cornstarch.

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 ↓

Mock Charlotte Russb

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 cake

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda.

  5. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the sour milk.

  6. Divide the batter into layers.

  7. Bake the layers until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, bring the sweet milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cornstarch with a little milk, then add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until thickened, then remove from heat and let cool.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are cool, layer them with the filling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the layers as they bake.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiled sweet milk into a filling that sets as it cools.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed before it meets the hot milk, or it clumps. Once boiling, it needs constant stirring so the starch granules swell evenly and thicken the filling.

“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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