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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried dough made with sugar, sour milk, egg, lard, baking soda, allspice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Allspice and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,302 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, sour milk, egg, lard, baking soda, and allspice.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is easy to roll.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired 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. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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
Reacts with baking soda to give the dough lift and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat for frying and browning.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and contributes to browning during frying.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.

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 crisping. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the cakes brown evenly and stay light inside.

Swap the allspice

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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