Name: Boston Cream Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; ¾ pound flour; 8 eggs; 1 pint water

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Cream Cakes

Ingredients

½ pound butter
¾ pound flour
8 eggs
1 pint water

Directions

Make the batter

Stir the butter into warm water and bring to a boil for 1 minute.
Remove from heat and let cool.
Beat the eggs until light and stir into the cooled mixture.

Bake

Fill small buttered pans half full with the batter.
Bake for 10 minutes.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, which tenderises the batter and helps it brown.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Eggs: Add structure and lift, setting into the baked crumb as they cook.
Water: Melts the butter and turns the mixture into steam that helps the batter rise.

“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.