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Dessert

Jelly Cake Fritters

Fried rounds of stale sponge or cup cake coated in jam and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry jam and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Jelly Cake Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut stale sponge or cup cake into rounds using a cake cutter.

  2. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  3. Dip each cake round briefly in boiling milk, then drain excess milk.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cake rounds in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Spread each fried round thickly with strawberry jam or other jelly.

  3. Stack the rounds neatly and serve hot with cream poured over them.

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. Strawberry jam + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Strawberry jam + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale sponge cake or cup cake
Provides the base structure, and its dryness lets it soak up milk without falling apart.
Boiling milk
Softens the cake lightly so it becomes tender inside before frying.
Lard
Fries the rounds, giving a crisp, golden-brown surface and rich flavour.
Strawberry jam or other jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that contrasts with the rich, fried cake.

The step that matters

Fry the rounds in hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the cake soaks up fat and turns greasy and heavy rather than golden and crisp.

Swap the strawberry jam

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Strawberry jamthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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