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Dessert

Hartford Cream Cakes

A baked cake with a butter, milk, flour, and egg batter, filled with a thickened milk and egg cream flavored with lemon or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hartford 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. In a saucepan, combine the butter and milk, and heat until the butter melts.

  2. Stir in the flour until the mixture is smooth.

  3. Add the eggs two at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a buttered baking sheet.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  2. Once cooled, cut a small opening in each cake with scissors.

  3. For the cream filling, beat 2 eggs with 4 teaspoons of flour.

  4. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk and stir until thick and smooth.

  5. Flavor the cream with lemon or vanilla, then fill the cakes.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the starch structure that holds the batter together and sets when baked.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift as they set, and add richness to the cake and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cake shell.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns to steam in the oven, helping the cakes puff.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. The shells must be fully baked and dried through, or they can collapse or stay soft inside once cooled. Steam from the batter inflates the cakes, so the oven must be hot enough to set the structure before it deflates.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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