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Dessert

Filling for Cream Cakes

A sweet custard-like filling made from milk, sugar, eggs, flour, butter, salt, and optional vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Filling for Cream Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the sugar and flour in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture into boiling milk with salt and boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Add vanilla or lemon.

Fill the cakes

  1. Make a slit in each cake.

  2. Fill with the 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Thicken the cream and add richness as they set with the heat.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the cream holds its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps keep it smooth.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into boiling milk. Adding the egg and flour mixture to boiling milk while stirring keeps it smooth. Stirring prevents the eggs from scrambling and lumps from forming, while the flour starch thickens as it heats.

“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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