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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried cakes are sweet dough rings fried in lard, made with sour cream, butter, eggs, sugar, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sour cream or sour milk with butter, eggs, nutmeg, salt, sugar, and baking soda until smooth.

  2. Add cream of tartar and melted lard, then gradually mix in enough flour to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut into rings.

Fry

  1. Fry the rings in hot lard 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Sour cream or sour milk
Provides acidity and moisture that react with the baking soda to lift the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour dairy to produce carbon dioxide, causing the cakes to rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acid that supports the baking soda reaction and helps give a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Flour
Forms the gluten-based structure that holds the dough and its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the rings in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the rings absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly. Hot fat sets the outside fast, sealing in moisture and giving a crisp golden crust.

“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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