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Dessert

Cream Cakes

A simple batter of flour, water, butter, salt, and eggs baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 dough

  1. In a saucepan, bring the hot water, salt, and butter to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, add the flour all at once and stir until it pulls away from the pan, about 5 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs one at a time, beating each in thoroughly before adding the next.

Bake

  1. Drop small tablespoonfuls onto a buttered baking pan, spaced apart to allow for spreading.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 30 minutes until well risen, then reduce the heat and bake until done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Pastry flour
Forms the starch structure that sets the puffed walls around the hollow centre.
Eggs
Add structure and lift as their proteins set, and their moisture turns to steam that expands the dough.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps the dough come together in the boiling liquid.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Eggs must be added one at a time and fully blended, or the dough becomes lumpy or separates. A smooth, glossy dough holds its shape and rises evenly in the oven.

“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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