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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried Cakes are sweet cakes made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and spices, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

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 ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and spices.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture until well combined.

Fry

  1. Shape the dough into cakes and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 structure that holds the cakes together once fried.
Eggs
Add binding and richness, helping the dough hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the hot oil.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding the dry ingredients slowly and mixing until just combined keeps the dough from becoming tough, while still distributing the leavening evenly so the cakes rise consistently.

“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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