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Dessert

Saffron Cakes

Saffron cakes are small yeast cakes flavored and colored with saffron and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Saffron Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour and sugar together, making a hole in the center.

  2. Add yeast and mix in blood-warm milk with some flour.

  3. Let the mixture rise well.

  4. Melt butter in a little blood-warm milk and mix it into the flour mixture.

  5. Pour boiling water over saffron in a cup and let it steep to extract flavor.

  6. Mix enough saffron liquid to flavor the dough and color it bright.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold the mixture into small cakes like buns.

  2. Let them rise until light and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 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
Forms the structure that holds the dough and gives the cakes their body.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a rich, tender texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture and proteins that help build the dough and feed the yeast.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise well. The yeast needs time and warmth to ferment and build gas. If the dough is under-proofed, the cakes will be dense; the milk should be blood-warm, not hot, so the yeast is not killed.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Saffronthe original

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