Skip to main content
Dessert

Farina Cakes

A batter cake made with sweet milk, farina, eggs, butter, salt, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Farina Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in enough farina to create a stiff batter and let it cool.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, butter, and salt to the cooled batter.

  4. Mix in chopped parsley if desired.

Cook

  1. Cook on a griddle or frying pan like batter cakes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Farina
Thickens the boiled milk into a stiff batter that holds its shape as cakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes set firm when cooked.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the farina swells in and cooks into the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and a little fat for flavour and browning on the griddle.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes