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American Butter Cakes

A biscuit-like cake made with flour, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, egg yolks, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

American Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix half cake flour and half bread flour, then sift with baking soda and salt three times.

  2. Make a well in the center of the flour, add 6 cups of buttermilk, egg yolks, and melted butter.

  3. Stir in the flour to form a slack, smooth biscuit dough.

  4. Knead the dough well, then flatten it on a floured surface.

  5. Let the dough rest until it loses its springiness, then roll to ¾ inch thick.

Shape and rise

  1. Cut out biscuits with a 3-inch cutter and place in dusted boxes.

  2. Cover and let rise in a cool place until about 1 inch thick.

Bake

  1. Carefully lift out and bake on a hot plate or griddle on both sides.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the biscuits their structure.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the biscuits rise and tenderize.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release carbon dioxide for lift.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the fat, giving a tender crumb and smooth dough.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, coating flour particles to soften the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the dough rest until it loses its springiness. Resting relaxes the gluten developed by kneading. Rolling before it relaxes makes the dough spring back and produces tough, uneven biscuits.

“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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