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Dessert

Sour Cream Fried Cakes

Sour cream fried cakes are batter cakes made with sour cream, sugar, eggs, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Cream Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sour cream, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the salt, baking soda, and nutmeg, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable, using as little as possible.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough 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.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and keeps the dough tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour cream to lift the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown in the hot oil.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and the fried cakes dense and tough. Adding it gradually and stopping once the dough is manageable keeps the cakes light and tender.

“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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