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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried Cakes are batter cakes fried in lard, made with sugar, sour milk, eggs, ginger, nutmeg, flour, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Ginger and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine melted lard and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add flour, salt, ginger, and nutmeg, stirring as little as possible.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fat in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the batter until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.
Melted lard
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and contributes to golden browning when fried.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour, salt, ginger, and nutmeg, stirring as little as possible.. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes fried cakes tough and dense. Stirring gently keeps the texture tender.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, nutmeg, flour. 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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