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Sour Milk Cakes

Sour Milk Cakes are baked cakes made from sour milk, flour, molasses, baking soda, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Milk Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the molasses with the sour milk.

  2. In a deep bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  3. Make a hole in the flour and gradually pour in the milk, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  4. Beat the mixture until smooth and free from lumps.

  5. Add the dissolved baking soda and stir well.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Sour milk
Provides the liquid and acidity that react with baking soda to lift the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes once the batter is set by heat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and a darker colour to the cakes.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved baking soda and stir well. Baking soda starts reacting with the acid in the sour milk as soon as it meets liquid. Stirring it in evenly distributes the gas-producing reaction through the batter, and baking right away keeps the bubbles from escaping before the heat sets the structure.

“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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