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Boston Cream Cakes

Boston Cream Cakes are sponge cakes filled with custard.

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 ↓

Boston Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux base

  1. In a pot, boil the water and butter together.

  2. Stir in the flour while the mixture is boiling.

  3. Once cool, add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking pan.

  5. Bake until golden and cool completely.

Make the custard and fill

  1. For the custard, boil the milk.

  2. Add the sugar, then mix in the flour and beaten eggs.

  3. Cook until thickened, then fill the cooled cakes 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. 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
Bind the dough and set the custard, giving structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the cakes and custard their body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cakes a tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creamy flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Flour and egg proteins thicken the custard only when heated enough; stopping early leaves it runny, while overcooking can scramble the eggs and make it grainy.

“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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