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Dessert

Hartford Cream Cakes

A sweet cake made with milk, butter, flour, eggs, and a lemon or vanilla flavored cream filling.

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 dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter and milk, and heat until scalded.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

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

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

Bake and fill

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

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

  3. For the cream filling, beat 2 eggs with 4 tablespoons 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.

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 structure of the dough so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Eggs
Add structure and lift to the dough as they set, helping the cakes puff and hold together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Milk
Provides moisture that turns to steam in the oven, helping the cakes puff.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the dough. The dough must be smooth and well mixed after each egg; if eggs are added too fast or not fully incorporated, the dough can break or become watery and the cakes may not puff properly.

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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