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Dessert

Cream Cake

A layered cake made with a butter-sugar batter and a thickened milk, sugar, butter, egg, and corn-starch cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs, sweet milk, and cold water; mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then fold into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into 3 or 4 round cake tins.

Bake and make the cream

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. For the cream, boil the milk, sugar, butter, egg, and corn-starch until very thick.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then flavor with vanilla.

Assemble

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

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 enrich the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both the cake and the cream.
Corn-starch
Thickens the cream so it sets firm enough to layer between the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and cream and helps the batter brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the cream until very thick. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil and is stirred. Stopping early leaves a runny cream that will not hold between the layers, while overcooking can make it stiff and pasty.

“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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