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Dessert

Filled Fried Cakes or Sisky

A yeast-based fried cake filled with fruit or poppy seed, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 or Sisky

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Break the yeast cake into warm cream, add sugar, and set in a warm place to rise.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until creamy, then add melted butter, sugar, and mix well.

  3. Add warm cream, salt, brandy or rum, and the raised yeast; mix in flour to form a soft dough.

  4. Let the dough rise in a warm place.

Fill and shape

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured board and pat it to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut into small squares and place a teaspoon of filling on each square.

  3. Fold the squares over, pinch the edges tightly, cover, and let rise until light.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the filled cakes into hot lard and fry until brown, ensuring they are cooked through.

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. Brandy + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Leavens the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the dough through fat and emulsifying lecithin.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the dough its body.
Brandy or rum
Adds aroma and flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Frying the filled cakes. Lard must be hot enough so the dough seals and browns quickly while the inside cooks through. If the fat is too cool, the cakes absorb oil and turn greasy before the centre is done.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

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