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Dessert

Butter Cakes

A simple butter cake made with flour, butter, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and milk, baked into biscuit shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  2. Add milk gradually until a nice working dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thickness.

  2. Cut out shapes using a tea biscuit cutter.

  3. Dock the biscuits and bake on a hot plate, turning them over halfway through.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, which lifts the biscuits.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acidity that reacts with the baking soda to create rising gas.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough.

The step that matters

Add the milk gradually. Too much liquid at once makes the dough sticky and tough, while adding it slowly gives a workable dough. The baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting once wet, so shape and bake promptly to keep the lift.

“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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