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Filled Fried Cakes

Yeast dough rounds sandwiched around a rich filling, then fried in deep lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Filled Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Raise the yeast cake in a little cream and sugar.

  2. Melt the butter and pour off so the salt stays in the pan.

  3. Warm the cream, then add the butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, salt, rum or brandy, and the raised yeast.

  4. Mix in enough flour to make a dough just stiff enough to handle.

Fill and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut two rounds with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Place a spoonful of filling on one round, cover with the other, and pinch the edges together tightly.

  3. Let the filled cakes rise in a warm place until light.

  4. Drop them into deep hot lard, bottom side down, to fry.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,007 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Yeast cake
Raised first in cream and sugar, it leavens the dough so the cakes become light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the dough and filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the filling and rises in the frying.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges together tightly. If the seal is weak, the filling can leak into the hot lard during frying, and the cakes may open or burst as they rise and cook.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, butter, egg, rum, 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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