Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the choux dough
In a pot, pour boiling water over the butter and place it over medium heat.
Once it begins to boil, stir in the flour until combined.
Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs and mix well.
Bake the mixture in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
Make the custard
For the custard, combine cream, beaten eggs, and a little flour in a saucepan.
Sweeten and flavor the custard to your taste, then bring to a boil.
Fill and serve
Once the cakes are baked, open the sides and fill them with the custard.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the starch that gives the dough structure once baked.
- Unsalted butter
- Melts into the boiling water to add fat and tenderness to the dough.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, and help the cakes puff and set.
- Heavy cream
- Adds richness and body to the custard filling.
The step that matters
Letting the mixture cool before adding the eggs. If the dough is still very hot, the eggs can scramble or cook instead of blending smoothly, which weakens the dough's ability to rise and hold its structure in the oven.
“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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