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Dessert

Cream for Cream Cakes and Eclairs

A custard-like cream made with milk, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, butter, and flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cream for Cream Cakes and Eclairs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little cold milk and add to the boiling milk.

  3. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and sugar, and cook for another 5 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat, add the butter, and let cool.

Flavor and finish

  1. Once cool, flavor 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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spreadable cream as it cooks.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the cream as they cook with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch and eggs thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens its flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch mixture while it cooks. Cornstarch thickens when heated, but it can settle and form lumps on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly. Constant stirring keeps the heat even and the cream smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, lemon. 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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