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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A simple cake made with boiling water, butter, flour, eggs, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. In a saucepan, combine boiling water and butter.

  2. Add flour while boiling, stirring until stiff and smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Once cool, mix in the whole eggs until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between each.

  2. Brush the tops with reserved egg white before baking.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Starch that gelatinises with the boiling water to form a stiff paste that holds its shape.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, and expand with steam to give the cakes their hollow interior.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the paste stay tender.
Egg white
Brushed on top to give the baked surface a glossy, golden finish.

The step that matters

Let the paste cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a paste that is still hot can scramble and cook unevenly, and the paste may be too runny to hold its shape. Cooling to lukewarm lets the eggs blend in smoothly so the cakes rise well.

“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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