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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A cake made with butter, flour, water, eggs, milk, sugar, and a cream filling of milk, sugar, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 choux batter

  1. Boil the water and butter together.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Set aside to cool.

  4. When cold, add the eggs without beating.

  5. Butter a pan very lightly.

  6. Drop spoonfuls of the batter at intervals.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for twenty minutes.

  2. Split open the cakes.

  3. Fill with the cream filling.

Make the cream filling

  1. Scald the milk for the cream filling.

  2. Add the sugar, eggs, flour, and salt to the milk.

  3. Boil until it thickens.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Add structure and richness, helping the batter puff and set around the steam.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and softens the texture of the batter.
Flour
Provides structure, thickening the batter and the cream filling as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream filling and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cream filling thicken smoothly.

The step that matters

Add the eggs to the cooled batter without beating. The cooled paste must be cold enough that the eggs do not scramble, and the eggs should be added gently so the batter stays thick enough to hold its shape and puff 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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