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Dessert

Hartford Cream Cakes

A small cake made from butter, milk, flour, eggs, baked, then filled with a lemon or vanilla flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hartford Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter and milk, and heat until scalded.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

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

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cut a small opening in each cake with scissors.

  3. For the cream, beat 2 eggs with 4 tablespoons of flour.

  4. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk and stir until thick and smooth.

  5. Flavor the cream with lemon or vanilla.

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 + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the cakes and thickening the cream.
Flour
Gives the paste body so it holds its shape while baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cakes.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns to steam to puff the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. The cakes must be baked fully so the interior dries and sets; underbaked shells can collapse as they cool, and the hollow needed for the filling will not hold.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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