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Dessert

Fried Cake

A batter of sugar, sour milk, flour, eggs, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon juice is fried into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar and sour milk.

  2. Add flour, eggs, melted butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon juice. Stir until well combined.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a pan and drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Remove and drain on paper towels.

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 + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once the batter is set by frying.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the fried cakes.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening agents.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that works with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the batter.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. The oil must be hot enough when the batter is dropped in. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb excess oil and turn greasy, and if it is too hot the outside browns before the centre sets.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, egg, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, egg, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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