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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A batter of eggs, sugar, butter, sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour is fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, butter, and sweet milk.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and baking soda, then flavor with nutmeg or cinnamon.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll out.

Shape and fry

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

  2. Fry the cakes in boiling lard until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to help the cakes rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to seal the surface quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb excess grease and turn heavy and oily instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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