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Butter Cakes

A simple butter cake made with butter, flour, salt, baking powder, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add salt and baking powder, then mix well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream and milk.

Shape

  1. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut with a round cutter.

Cook

  1. Let the batter stand for 5 minutes.

  2. Bake on a griddle, first on one side then on the other.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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
Rubbed into the flour, it coats the flour and tenderises the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure as its proteins and starch set during cooking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, which lifts the cake.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving a richer, softer texture.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and brings the mixture together.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand for 5 minutes. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet. A long wait before cooking lets that gas escape, so the cake may rise less. Keep the rest short and bake promptly.

“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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