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Dessert

Irish Jely Fried Cakes

A fried cake made from butter, eggs, flour, and water, filled with marmalade and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Irish Jely Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter and cream of tartar.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until a dough forms.

  4. Set the dough in a warm place until it rises.

Fill and rise

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into cakes.

  2. Place a piece of marmalade on each cake.

  3. Cover with another cake and wet the bottom to stick.

  4. Let the cakes rise in a warm place.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry in hot boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Dust with sugar when cool.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the dough and carrying flavour.
Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, binding the dough and helping it rise.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure once mixed with liquid and fat.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the dough and adds slight acidity to the batter.
Marmalade
Provides sweetness and fruity flavour inside the cakes.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rise in a warm place. Warmth lets the yeast or leavening work and the dough expand, giving a light cake. Under-proofed cakes stay dense and can burst or absorb excess fat when fried.

“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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