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Dessert

An Excellent Cake for Breakfast

A yeast-based cake made with flour, butter, egg yolks, and milk, baked into thick slices for breakfast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

An Excellent Cake for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and add the yeast.

  2. Mix the yeast with a little flour and the warm milk until it resembles thick batter.

  3. Let the mixture rise well.

  4. Melt the butter in a little milk, ensuring it is not too hot.

  5. Add the egg yolks and salt to the flour and yeast mixture.

  6. Combine everything into a dough that is not too soft.

Shape and rise

  1. Butter an iron plate and two or three cake hoops.

  2. Shape the dough into cakes about 2 inches thick and place them in the hoops.

  3. Let the cakes rise until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Cut the cakes into slices ½ inch thick, butter each slice, and cut them across into six pieces.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 structure of the dough that holds the cakes together.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Warm milk
Hydrates the flour and activates the yeast, giving the dough its moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness, color and emulsifying fat that tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Combine everything into a dough that is not too soft. Too much liquid makes the dough slack, so it will not hold its shape in the hoops or rise evenly. Flour should be added until the dough is firm enough to shape, since the gluten network needs enough flour to trap the gas from the yeast.

“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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