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Dessert

Maine Rye Cakes

A quick rye cake made with rye meal, wheat flour, sour milk, molasses, and baked in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Maine Rye Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the rye meal.

  2. Sift the wheat flour with salt and baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the molasses.

  2. Stir in the sour milk until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot lard.

  2. Fry until a darker brown.

  3. Serve warm for breakfast or lunch with hot coffee.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye meal
Gives the cakes their characteristic flavor and a dense, hearty texture.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten structure so the batter holds together while frying.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the cakes and adds tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the cakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deeper color to the batter and fried crust.

The step that matters

Fry until a darker brown. Frying in hot lard browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavor. Stopping too early leaves the cakes pale and doughy inside, while overcooking can scorch the sugars in the molasses.

“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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