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Baking Powder

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. For bread, use 4 teaspoons of baking powder for 1 quart of flour, or 1 teaspoon for each cup of flour.

  2. For plain cake, add 1 saltspoon of spice and 1 teaspoon of extract for each loaf, and 1 teaspoon of baking powder for every 2 cups of flour.

  3. For sponge cake, use 1 saltspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of extract for 1 loaf.

  4. For custards, mix 1 teaspoon of extract for 1 quart of custard and 1 saltspoon of salt for 4 cups of milk.

  5. In soup, add 1 teaspoon of mixed herbs for each quart of soup.

  6. For soup stock, combine 1 tablespoon of chopped vegetables, 1 teaspoon of mixed herbs, 4 cloves, 4 peppercorns, and 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of stock.

  7. Use 1 quart of water for each pound of meat and bone.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Clove + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together752 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, clove, meat):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, clove, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.