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Dessert

Economical Tea Cake

A simple cake made with flour, butter or lard, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Economical Tea Cake

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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter or lard with the sugar until light.

  4. Gradually add the milk to the sugar mixture, stirring well.

  5. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.

  6. Add spices to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into small molds and bake 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with fat, traps air that adds lightness.
Sour or sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the leavening.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to develop, and overmixing makes the cake tough. Stop as soon as no dry flour remains, while the leavening is still active.

“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.

More tea cake recipes

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