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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, mace, and optional rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the fat until it stops bubbling and is still.

  2. Test the heat with a small piece of dough; it should rise and bubble.

  3. Fry cakes until the underside is brown, turning them two or three times.

  4. Fry for 7-8 minutes if they are about the thickness of a little finger.

  5. Drain the cakes well with a skimmer after frying.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the main structure of the dough so the cakes hold their shape in hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the fat.

The step that matters

Testing the fat temperature. If the fat is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. A small test piece of dough that rises and bubbles shows the fat is at a good frying heat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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