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Rye Drop-cakes

A simple baked rye drop cake made with rye meal, flour, eggs, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rye Drop-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the rye meal, flour, eggs, milk, and salt.

  2. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Rye meal
Adds a nutty, earthy flavour and a denser, more tender crumb than flour alone.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten for structure so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as they heat, giving the cakes firmness.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and meal and keeps the cakes moist.

The step that matters

Beat the batter until smooth. Thorough beating fully hydrates the flour and meal and evens out the batter so the cakes bake uniformly. Overbeating, however, develops gluten in the wheat flour and can make the cakes tough.

“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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