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Dessert

Brioche Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made with milk, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, lemon zest, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brioche Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Grate the rind of half a lemon and squeeze the juice from half a lemon.

  2. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk.

  3. Add one and one-half cups of flour, sugar, and salt to the mixture; cover and let rise until light and bubbly.

  4. Add well-beaten eggs and the remaining ingredients, adding a cup and one-half more of flour, beating well.

  5. Let dough rise twice the bulk.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll dough on a slightly floured board to a half-inch thickness.

  2. Spread softened butter over dough, fold both sides to the center to create three layers.

  3. Cut strips three-fourths of an inch wide.

  4. Cover and let rise.

  5. Fold ends together to form a circle.

  6. Let rise again twice the size.

  7. Bake for twenty minutes.

Make the rusks

  1. Make the dough for rusks in one large loaf the same shape as the rusks, or two loaves can be made from it if small.

  2. Let rise and bake well.

  3. When cold, cut into half-inch slices and dry them in a very slow oven until dried through and deep yellow.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

743Calories
28 gProtein
15 gFat
124 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the dough bind and bake with a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and lets it hold rising gas.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Moistens the dough and softens its texture, while supplying sugars that brown lightly in the oven.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning in the baked crust.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat that tenderises the layers and gives a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light and bubbly before adding the eggs and remaining flour. Yeast needs time to become active and build gas; rising too little leaves the cakes dense, while the later rises depend on this early fermentation being well established.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, flour, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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