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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A small cake made from flour, butter, eggs, water, baked and filled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the paste

  1. In a small pot, combine water and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Sift in flour and stir with a wooden spoon over low heat until a thick, smooth paste forms and pulls away from the sides of the pot; let cool.

Add eggs and shape

  1. Beat the whites of two eggs and the yolks of three eggs into the mixture, adding one at a time and beating for five minutes between each addition.

  2. Drop large teaspoonfuls onto a well-greased baking sheet.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Once cool, open the cakes and fill them with whipped cream.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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 and gluten set into a thick paste that holds the cakes' hollow shape.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and their moisture turns to steam that helps the cakes puff.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the paste.
Water
Provides moisture that becomes steam in the oven, helping the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Eggs must be fully beaten into the warm paste before the next is added. Adding them too fast, or to a paste that is still too hot, can scramble the egg or leave a loose batter that will not hold its shape.

“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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