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Dessert

Fried Milk Cakes

Fried Milk Cakes are small cakes made from a stiff dough of flour and milk, studded with currants and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Fried Milk Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a stiff dough with the flour and milk.

  2. Add the currants and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough as thin as possible.

  2. Cut into round cakes.

  3. Fry the cakes in butter or ghee until golden brown.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Fine wheat flour
Forms the structure of the dough, setting the cakes once fried.
Milk
Hydrates the flour into a stiff dough and adds softness and browning sugars.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the cakes.
Butter or ghee
Conducts heat for frying and gives the cakes rich flavour and golden browning.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin cakes cook through quickly in hot fat, so they brown evenly without staying raw in the centre. A thick dough can scorch outside while remaining doughy inside.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, milk, butter. 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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