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Dessert

Water Cakes

Water cakes are a thin dough made with flour, butter, powdered sugar, caraway seeds, and milk, baked until light.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Water Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and caraway seeds.

  3. Gradually add milk to form a thin paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough as thin as possible using minimal flour.

  2. Place on buttered paper and prick all over before baking.

  3. Bake in a slack oven until very light.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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 thin biscuit together.
Butter
Coats the flour particles and shortens gluten, giving a tender, crisp texture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the paste for a fine, even texture.
Caraway seeds
Contribute the distinctive aromatic, slightly peppery flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dough binds into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Baking in a slack oven until very light. A slow, gentle oven dries the thin dough into a crisp biscuit without browning it. A hotter oven would colour the edges before the centre sets and dries, so the pale colour is intended.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, 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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