Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Cream Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Beat together the flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl until well combined.
Cook and cool
Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.
Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Finish
Flavor as desired and fill the cakes.
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.
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 starch that thickens the mixture as it heats, giving body to the filling.
- Eggs
- Their proteins set when heated, thickening the milk mixture into a custard-like texture.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps keep the mixture smooth and tender.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour and eggs thicken into a cream.
The step that matters
Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Adding eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Pouring the egg mixture in steadily while stirring, and keeping the milk at a boil only as long as the recipe calls for, helps the proteins thicken the cream smoothly.
“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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