Skip to main content
Dessert

Cottage Cakes with Sour Cream

A quick baked cake made with flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, sour cream, and egg.

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

Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cottage Cakes with Sour Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and mix

  1. Sift the baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt with the flour.

  2. Stir in the sour cream and add the beaten egg.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into buttered pans, leaving them uneven.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of sour cream and cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tenderness, and acidity that reacts with the leavening.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the cakes.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into buttered pans, leaving them uneven.. The batter should be portioned rather than spread so the cakes keep their rounded shape. Leaving the tops uneven gives a rustic look and lets the leavening work evenly as the cakes bake.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes