Name: Boston Cream Cakes
Ingredients: 2⅔ cups butter; ¾ pint milk; 2¾ cups flour; 5 eggs; ½ pint milk (for cream); nearly 2 cups sugar; 3 eggs (for cream); ⅔ cup flour (for cream)

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

In a saucepan, heat the milk and butter until boiling.
Mix in the flour to form a paste and let it cool slightly.
Beat the 5 eggs and incorporate them into the dough.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough into tins.
For the cream, boil the ½ pint of milk.
In a bowl, beat the 3 eggs, then add the sugar and ⅔ cup of flour, mixing well.
Pour the cream mixture into the boiling milk.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes

Spice Cake344 recipes

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Boston Cream Cakes