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Dessert

New York Butter Cakes

A sweet cake made from butter, milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and bread sponge, baked into biscuit-like pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

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

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Once boiling, add sifted flour while stirring with an egg beater.

  4. Remove from heat and transfer to a wooden bowl.

  5. Let cool until you can hold your hand in it.

  6. Gradually mix in the whole eggs and egg yolks.

  7. Add the bread sponge and enough flour to form a dough similar to tea biscuits.

  8. Let the dough rest and rise for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough into a sheet and cut into large biscuits.

  2. Brush with egg wash and coat in granulated sugar.

  3. Place on pans, allowing them to rise again before baking.

  4. Bake until they are a nice golden color.

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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the starch structure that sets the cake crumb once baked.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, with yolks contributing tenderness and colour.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture and helps build the custard-like base of the dough.
Bread sponge
Provides fermentation for rising and a light, airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the coating brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. If the mixture is still very hot, the eggs can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly into the dough. Cooling to a warm but bearable temperature lets the eggs incorporate evenly.

“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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