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Dessert

Boston Cream Cakes

Boston Cream Cakes are layered cakes with custard filling, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Boston Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. In a large bowl, stir 4 ounces of butter and 6 ounces of flour into 1 pint of boiling water.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool, then add 5 beaten eggs and ½ teaspoon of baking powder.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly and pour it into patty pans.

  4. Bake in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. To make the custard, combine 1 pint of boiling milk, 1 cup of sugar, 3 beaten eggs, and ½ cup of corn-starch.

  2. Flavor the custard with lemon or vanilla extract as preferred.

  3. Once cool, cut a small opening in each cake and fill with custard.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the cakes as they cook, giving structure.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cakes their body.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and turn light.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the eggs and baking powder. The boiling water and butter mixture must cool enough that the eggs do not scramble and the baking powder is not wasted by excess heat before the batter is set. Beating thoroughly then ensures an even, airy batter.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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