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Dessert

Batter Cakes for Tea

Small batter cakes made with eggs, milk, cream, pearlash, flour, spices, and optional rose water, cooked on a greased griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Batter Cakes for Tea

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk and cream.

  2. Add the dissolved pearlash, salt, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and rose-water if desired.

  3. Stir in sifted flour until the batter is smooth and thick.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a griddle or pan with butter and drop the batter in small, thin round cakes.

  2. Turn the cakes when browned, but avoid burning them.

  3. Stack the cakes on a plate with a little butter between each layer.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the thin cakes.
Pearlash
Reacts with moisture to lighten the batter and help the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the body that lets the batter set into thick, cohesive cakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the cakes moist and tender.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Turn the cakes when browned, but avoid burning them.. Sugar and proteins brown quickly on a hot griddle, so the cakes can scorch on the outside while the centre stays raw. Turning at the first golden colour lets the inside cook through 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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