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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A simple cake made with butter, water, flour, eggs, and baking soda, baked in spoonfuls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the butter in the water.

  2. While boiling, stir in the flour, then remove from heat.

  3. Gradually stir in the eggs until smooth. Do not beat them.

  4. Add the baking soda.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto tin sheets in desired sizes.

  2. Bake for 30 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.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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 for richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Its starch and gluten set the structure as the cakes bake.
Eggs
Bind the batter, add richness, and help set the structure.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Stir the eggs in gently rather than beating them. Beating overdevelops gluten in the flour, which makes cakes tough. Gradual stirring blends the eggs smoothly without overworking the batter.

“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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