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Dessert

New York Butter Cakes

A sweet, yeasted cake made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and bread sponge.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

New York Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine milk, sugar, and butter in a pot.

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Stir in sifted flour using an egg beater.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Transfer to a wooden bowl.

  6. Let cool until warm.

  7. Gradually mix in whole eggs and egg yolks.

  8. Add bread sponge and enough flour to form dough similar to tea biscuit dough.

  9. Let dough rest and rise for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out dough into a sheet.

  2. Cut into large biscuits.

  3. Brush with egg wash.

  4. Coat in granulated sugar.

  5. Place on baking pans.

  6. Let rise again.

  7. Bake until golden.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 once it is set by heat and baking.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the dough as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the dough.
Bread sponge
Ferments the dough so it rises, giving a lighter texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour while boiling. Adding flour to the hot liquid and stirring it smooth without lumps lets the starch gelatinise, which gives a uniform dough. Lumps left in the mix can cause uneven texture in the finished 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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