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Dessert

Opera Cream Cakes

A sweet cake made with cream, walnuts, and chocolate, set in muffin tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Opera Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 240°F (115°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Dust the muffin tins lightly with XXXX sugar.

Make the centers

  1. In a pot, cook the sugar, cream of tartar, and cream until it reaches 240°F (115°C).

  2. Pour the mixture onto a damp slab and sprinkle the ground walnuts on top.

  3. Once cool, knead the mixture until smooth.

  4. Fill each tin evenly with the mixture and let it set for one hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn out the cakes and dip them in melted bitter sweet chocolate.

  2. Arrange them nicely and cut a few open to show the center.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Cooked to 240°F, it forms the set, sweet body of the cream centers.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the centers a soft, smooth texture.
Cream of tartar
Acidity that helps keep the cooked sugar smooth and prevents crystallization.
Ground english walnuts
Add nutty flavor and body to the centers.

The step that matters

Kneading after cooling. Kneading only once the mixture has cooled keeps sugar crystals fine, so the centers turn smooth rather than grainy. Working it while hot can make it set coarse.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, chocolate):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, chocolate. 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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