Skip to main content
Dessert

YOEKSHmE Tea-cakes

A yeast‑leavened cake made with flour, milk, butter, egg, and German yeast, baked to a golden finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

YOEKSHmE Tea-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Heat ¾ cup of milk in a small saucepan until warm.

  2. Dissolve ½ ounce of German yeast in a basin and pour the warm milk over it.

  3. In a large basin, combine ¾ pound of flour and rub in 1 ounce of butter.

  4. Beat 1 egg in a cup and add it to the flour mixture.

  5. Strain the yeast and milk mixture into the basin and mix well with a wooden spoon.

  6. Flour a board and turn the dough out onto it.

  7. Flour your hands and knead the dough for 1-2 minutes.

Shape and rise

  1. Use a floured knife to divide the dough into cakes.

  2. Grease cake tins with dripping and place the cakes inside, filling them only ¾ full.

  3. Allow the cakes to rise near the fire for 1 hour.

Bake and cool

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the cakes for 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the cakes out of the tins and cool them on a sieve or chair.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft, tender dough.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderises the crumb and adds richness.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the dough together.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rise fully before baking. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. Rising too briefly leaves dense cakes, while the cakes are only filled ¾ full in the tins so there is room to expand.

“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.

More tea cakes recipes

Yorkshire 31Cream 8Afternoon 7Berry 7English 7Queen's 3 See all 209 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes