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Dessert

Coffee Cakes

A fried cake made from flour, baking powder, eggs, lard, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Coffee Cakes

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

  2. Rub lard into the flour until well mixed.

  3. Break the eggs into the flour mixture.

  4. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Fry in hot lard 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough, giving the cakes a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and browns the cakes when frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy. Enough heat sets the outside quickly, so the cakes brown evenly and stay lighter inside.

“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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