Skip to main content
Dessert

American Butter Cakes

A cake made with all-purpose flour, buttermilk, bicarbonate of soda, salt, egg yolks, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Sift together half cake flour and half bread flour with the soda and salt three times.

  2. Make a well in the center of the flour, then add 2 pints of milk, egg yolks, and melted butter.

  3. Mix until the dough resembles a slack smooth biscuit dough.

  4. Knead the dough well, then flatten it with your hands and let it rest until it loses its springiness.

Shape and rise

  1. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick, let it rest for a minute, then cut into 3-inch rounds.

  2. Place the rounds in cloth-lined dusted boxes, cover, and let rise in a cool place until about 1 inch thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Carefully lift out the cakes and bake on a hot plate or griddle on both sides until golden.

  2. Serve hot, split in half, and butter generously.

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 structure that holds the risen cakes together.
Buttermilk or sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the soda to produce gas and keeps the crumb tender.
Bicarbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid in the milk to release carbon dioxide, which makes the cakes rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough while adding softness.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Baking on the griddle. A hot plate sets the cakes quickly while carbon dioxide from the soda and acid is still expanding them. Both sides must brown evenly. A surface that is too cool lets the cakes spread and leaves the centres doughy.

“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.

You might also like

Buttermilk PieButtermilk Pie12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes