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Bread Cakes

A quick baked cake made from bread crumbs, milk, butter, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Cakes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 325°F (165°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak the crumbs

  1. Pour boiling milk over bread crumbs, butter, and salt; cover and let stand for 30 minutes.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat in eggs and flour until well combined.

  2. Gradually stir in cold milk.

  3. Bake like buckwheat cakes at 325°F (165°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the body of the cakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the crumbs and flour for a tender batter.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in cold milk. Adding the cold milk slowly to the flour and egg mixture helps prevent lumps and keeps the batter smooth and evenly textured.

“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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