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Dessert

Buffalo Cream Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling made from milk, corn starch, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Buffalo Cream 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder, vanilla, flour, and salt until smooth.

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

Make the cream

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk for the cream.

  2. Mix in 1 tablespoon of corn starch dissolved in a little milk.

  3. Add 2 beaten eggs and 1 cup of sugar to the milk mixture and boil until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is cool, split it and fill 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. Vanilla + corntop 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 thicken the cream as they set when heated.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake layers rise.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream when it is heated with the milk.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the cream and helps browning.

The step that matters

Boil the cream until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and the eggs can curdle or scramble if overheated, so stirring constantly while it thickens matters.

“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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