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Dessert

Eye Cakes for Tea

A rye and wheat flour cake flavored with molasses, baked with sour milk and baking soda.

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 ↓

Eye Cakes for Tea

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine rye flour, wheat flour, and coarse sea salt.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, mix sour milk and baking soda; let it foam.

  2. Stir the foaming mixture into the flour mixture along with molasses.

  3. Mix until stiff, then pour into a buttered pan.

  4. Smooth the top with a spoon dipped in hot water.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + wheattop 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 flour
Provides the dense, structured crumb and earthy flavor typical of rye baking.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten for structure, giving the cake more lift and a lighter crumb than rye alone.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color that promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the milk and baking soda foam before mixing. The foam shows the acid and base are reacting to release carbon dioxide. Adding the mixture after it has foamed lets the gas be trapped in the batter for rising.

“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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