Name: Cream Cakes
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; 2 cups thick sweet cream; 4 cups all-purpose flour

Why it works: Cream and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 teaspoon salt
2 cups thick sweet cream
4 cups all-purpose flour

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 dough

Stir salt into the cream.
Sift in the flour slowly.
Roll the mixture to 1 inch thick.
Cut out shapes with a tumbler.

Bake

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

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.

Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 and gluten that give the cakes their structure as they set.
Thick sweet cream: Adds fat and moisture, making the cakes rich and tender.

“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.