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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A cake made from a butter‑water‑flour mixture, baked and filled with a thickened milk‑flour‑sugar‑egg cream flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 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 pastry

  1. Boil the butter and water together in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually stir in the flour while boiling until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking tin.

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

Make the cream

  1. Beat together the milk, flour, sugar, and eggs for the cream.

  2. Stir the mixture gradually into a boiling pot until thickened.

  3. Flavor the cream with lemon.

  4. Let the cream cool before filling the cakes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pastry and cream together as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the pastry dough.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the pastry puff and set when baked.
Milk
Gives the cream its liquid base and smooth, rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and contributes to browning of the cakes.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Each egg must fully blend before the next is added so the dough becomes smooth and glossy. Adding eggs too fast can leave the dough broken, which stops it from rising properly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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