Skip to main content
Dessert

Hayes Cake

A simple cake made with sugar, butter, sour milk, eggs, soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Hayes Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix one cup sugar and one-half cup butter.

  2. Beat three eggs well together.

  3. Stir one level teaspoon soda into one-half cup sour milk.

  4. Add two small cups flour.

  5. Flavor with Jemon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a small dripping pan.

  2. Bake for half an hour.

  3. Cut into squares.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

833Calories
27 gProtein
26 gFat
120 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

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

By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio). 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Add structure and binding to the batter.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to make the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake.

The step that matters

Stir the soda into the sour milk. Soda needs an acid like sour milk to react and produce gas for rising. Stirring it in well, and adding the batter promptly, helps the cake rise evenly rather than unevenly or flat.

“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