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Bread Cakes, Fried, American

Fried bread cakes made from light dough, butter, brown sugar, salt, eggs, nutmeg, and fried in lard or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Cakes, Fried, American

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the light dough, butter, brown sugar, salt, eggs, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Knead the mixture well with flour until smooth.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place until very light.

Shape and fry

  1. Knead the dough again after it rises, then cut it into diamond-shaped cakes.

  2. Allow the cakes to rise again.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot lard or dripping until golden brown.

  4. Serve the cakes immediately after frying.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Light dough
Provides the yeast-leavened base that rises and gives the cakes their airy structure.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough hold its shape and set when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the dough.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps the cakes brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard or dripping. If the fat is not hot enough, the cakes absorb oil and turn greasy and pale before they set. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the inside cooks through while the outside turns golden brown.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour. 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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