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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A fried dough cake made with egg, sugar, lard, milk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the sugar, melted lard, and sweet milk.

  2. Add the cream of tartar, salt, baking soda, and nutmeg.

  3. Gradually add flour until a stiff dough forms.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll out the dough to less than 1 inch thick, cut into shapes, and fry in hot lard.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to lighten the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that turns the mixture into a stiff dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping and browning quickly. Rolling the dough to a consistent thickness, under 1 inch, helps the pieces cook through evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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