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
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the paste
Stir the butter into the warm water in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often.
Once boiling, add the flour and boil for one minute, stirring continuously.
Remove from heat and transfer to a deep dish to cool.
Make the batter
Beat the eggs until light and fluffy.
Mix in the yolks.
Fold in the whipped egg whites.
Bake
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered parchment paper, ensuring they do not touch.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Eggs
- Provide structure and lift, with whipped whites expanding the batter as it bakes.
- Flour
- Cooked with the liquid, its starch sets into a paste that gives the cakes their shape.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the finished cakes.
- Warm water
- Provides moisture that turns to steam in the oven, helping the cakes puff.
The step that matters
Cooling the flour paste before adding the eggs. If the paste is still very hot when the eggs go in, the eggs can scramble or cook instead of blending smoothly. Boiling the flour for a minute cooks its starch so the paste holds its shape, and cooling it lets the eggs be mixed in without curdling.
“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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