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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A baked cake made from a butter and water roux, eggs, and a milk filling flavored with lemon or vanilla.

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 ↓

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 paste

  1. In a saucepan, boil the butter and cold water together.

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

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking sheets.

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

Make the filling

  1. In another bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, and flour together.

  2. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Fill and serve

  1. Cut a slit in each cake and fill with the milk mixture.

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

Flour
Thickens the paste and gives the cooked cakes and filling their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the paste and softens the texture of the cakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cakes set and the filling thicken.
Baking soda
Helps the cakes rise and brown in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid and body for the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling.

The step that matters

Let the paste cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot paste can scramble instead of blending smoothly, so the paste must cool first to keep it smooth and able to rise evenly 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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