Skip to main content
Dessert

Boston Cream Cakes

A layered cake with a custard filling made from cream, milk, vanilla, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

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

Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Boston Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream with vanilla and cinnamon.

  2. Strain and mix with the rest of the milk.

  3. When cold, add the yolks of the eggs and sugar.

  4. Bake the custard in a bain-marie.

Make and fill the cakes

  1. Prepare a batter with flour, butter, milk, and eggs.

  2. Bake in buttered deep pans.

  3. When browned, make a slit in the side of each cake while hot.

  4. Fill with custard.

  5. Close the slit smoothly and set the cakes aside.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard when baked and add richness and a smooth set.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake so it holds its shape around the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the cake and helps it brown.
Eggs
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture in the batter and the base of the custard.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a softer, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Bake the custard in a bain-marie. Gentle, indirect heat from the water bath keeps the egg-thickened custard from overheating, which would curdle it or make it grainy and watery.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes