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Dessert

Tiny Cream Cakes

A small cake with English cream filling, topped with fondant and tiny candies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tiny Cream Cakes

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 dough

  1. Combine the butter and boiling water in a saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts.

  2. Add the flour and stir continuously until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, add the whole egg, and beat until smooth. Add the extra yolk and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Using a teaspoon, shape the mixture into rounds about 1¼ inches across on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

Fill and decorate

  1. Once cooled, make a small opening on one side of each cake.

  2. Fill the opening with English Cream.

  3. Dip the tops in melted fondant or frosting.

  4. Sprinkle with tiny candies.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Melts into the boiling water to add richness and tenderness to the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the puffed cakes together once cooked.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure, moisture and richness as the cakes puff.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and water. Cooking the flour paste until it pulls away from the pan drives off excess moisture and gelatinizes the starch. Dry, well-cooked paste helps the cakes puff and hold their hollow centers when baked.

“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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