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 ↓
Sallie Lunn
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the dough
In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, sweet milk, sugar, butter, baking powder, and salt.
Add flour gradually until a stiff dough forms.
Mix thoroughly and shape into a flat cake.
Bake and serve
Bake until golden brown.
Split the cake and butter it before serving.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and add structure and richness to the dough.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and softens the stiff dough as it hydrates the flour.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the dough so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and is spread on the cake after splitting.
The step that matters
Adding the flour gradually. Flour added slowly lets you judge the dough's stiffness, so it doesn't become too dry or too wet. Mixing it thoroughly then develops even structure, which keeps the baked cake from being crumbly or dense.
“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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