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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet batter of sugar, buttermilk, lard, butter, eggs, flour, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda, formed into cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine sugar and buttermilk in a large bowl.

  2. Add lard, butter, and eggs; mix well.

  3. Whisk flour, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda together in another bowl.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough out as thin as possible and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides.

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough while adding structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness and tang.
Lard and butter
Add fat that gives tenderness and flavor to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during frying.

The step that matters

Roll the dough out as thin as possible. Thin dough cooks through quickly in hot oil, so the outside browns before the inside stays raw or greasy. Rolling too thick leaves dense centers and uneven cooking.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, buttermilk, egg, butter, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, buttermilk, egg, butter, flour, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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