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Dessert

Wheat Drop Cakes

A fried batter made from wheat flour, sugar, baking powder, egg, milk, salt, and butter.

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

Wheat Drop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients and pass through a sieve.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it and the milk into the dry ingredients.

  3. Add the melted butter last.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat a kettle of oil.

  2. Dip a dessert spoon into the hot oil, take up a spoonful of the mixture, and drop it into the oil.

  3. Fry for about six minutes or until cooked through.

  4. Drain on soft paper.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as the starch sets during frying.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the drop cakes rise and turn light and airy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a spoonable batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into the hot oil. Oil that is not hot enough lets the batter soak up grease and cook unevenly, while a properly hot oil sets the outside quickly. Frying in small spoonfuls keeps the oil temperature steady and helps each cake cook through.

“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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