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Dessert

Baptist Cake

A fried dough cake served with a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Baptist Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add salt and baking powder, then mix well.

  3. Gradually add milk until the dough is easy to roll out.

  4. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut into squares.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the squares in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. For the gravy, rub together 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Stir in 1 quart of boiling milk until it thickens slightly.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the fried cakes in a serving dish and pour the gravy over them.

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. 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).

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
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with milk.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a workable dough and thickens the gravy.
Lard
Fries the squares, producing a crisp, golden brown surface.

The step that matters

Fry the squares in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the squares absorb more fat and turn greasy rather than crisp. Frying at proper heat seals the surface quickly and browns it evenly.

“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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