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Dessert

Boston Tea Cakes

A cake made with flour, eggs, sweet milk, melted butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boston Tea Cakes

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, eggs, sweet milk, melted butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar until well combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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. Butter + creamtop 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. 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
Provides the main structure that holds the tea cakes together as they set.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set firmly in the oven.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and activates the leavening.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, which makes the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce lift and a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven. Baking soda and cream of tartar start releasing gas as soon as the batter is wet. Putting the batter straight into a hot oven lets the bubbles set the rise before they escape, so the cakes come out light rather than flat.

“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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