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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried cake made with water, milk, sugar, lard, yeast, eggs, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

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

Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine warm water, sweet milk, sugar, lard, yeast, and eggs.

  2. Mix until light enough to add nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Once very light, cut the dough into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. After frying, roll the cakes in sugar.

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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough and helping it hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn very light.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.
Baking soda
Helps leaven the dough and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying in hot oil sets the outside quickly while the inside finishes cooking. Oil that is too cool lets the cakes soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre is cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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