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Dessert

Bread Crumb Cakes

A cake made from soaked stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, eggs, flour, salt, and baking powder, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Crumb Cakes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Crumb Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak the crumbs

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in scalded milk overnight.

  2. In the morning, strain the mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs, flour, salt, and baking powder to the strained mixture.

  2. If the batter is too thick, thin it with cold milk.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Stale bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the cake and absorb the milk, giving a moist, soft crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and sets the batter's consistency and moisture.
Eggs
Add structure and binding so the cake holds together as it sets.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the batter set firm when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Thinning the batter. A batter that is too stiff bakes dense and unevenly. Adding cold milk only when needed loosens it to a pourable texture, so the crumb stays tender and the cake rises evenly.

“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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