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Dessert

Fried Cakes I

Fried cakes made from flour, eggs, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Fried Cakes I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk and melted butter.

  3. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients until a soft dough forms.

  4. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

Fry

  1. 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 structure and richness, binding the dough and helping it set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the finished cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the cakes puff up when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess oil and turn greasy before browning. If it is too hot, the outside browns quickly while the centre stays raw. Steady, moderate heat lets the cake cook through and turn golden on both sides.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, butter, milk. 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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