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Dessert

Soda Cakes, Very Superior

Soda cakes are quick breads made with flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Soda Cakes, Very Superior

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together in a large bowl.

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in enough milk to form a dough thick enough to roll out.

  4. Take a large spoonful of the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Sift flour on a clean surface.

  2. Roll the dough out.

  3. Cut the dough into shapes.

  4. Place the shapes on a baking sheet without touching them with your hands.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and contributes to a rich texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the cakes.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in enough milk to form a dough thick enough to roll out.. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and mixed evenly through the dough, or pockets of unreacted soda can cause bitter spots and uneven rising.

“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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