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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried Cakes are sweet cakes made with sour milk, sugar, lard, eggs, ginger, salt, baking soda, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk, sugar, lard, eggs, ginger, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is workable.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into small cakes.

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the dough rises and turns tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping bind the dough together.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat that browns the cakes when frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during frying.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together for rolling and cutting.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy instead of forming a crisp, golden crust. Oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, 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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