Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Cakes

A cake made with water, butter, flour, eggs, sugar, milk, and lemon essence, baked and filled with a thickened milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil the water and butter together.

  2. Stir in the flour while boiling.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat to cool.

  4. Once cool, add the eggs one at a time, stirring thoroughly without beating.

  5. Add 1 teaspoon of cold water.

  6. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a pan, as they do not rise much.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C) without opening the oven door.

Make the filling and fill the cakes

  1. For the filling, boil the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs, sugar, and flour together.

  3. Stir the beaten mixture into the boiling milk until thickened.

  4. Add essence of lemon to flavor.

  5. When cool, fill the cakes.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 paste and give the cakes structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the paste, giving a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the starch base of the paste and thickens the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling, giving it a creamy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and contributes to its thickened texture.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten mixture into the boiling milk until thickened. Adding the egg and flour mixture to boiling milk while stirring keeps the eggs from scrambling and lets the starch thicken the custard evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More cream cakes recipes

Boston 4Cream for 3Hartford 3 See all 94 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes