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Rusks Made with Sour Cream

A baked rusk made with butter, flour, sour cream, eggs, candied peel, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rusks Made with Sour Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine oatmeal.

  3. Add the salt, powdered sugar, and candied peel, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs and sour cream, then work into the flour mixture to form a smooth dough.

  5. Mix the baking soda with the powdered sugar and flour, then add to the dough just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 cakes and place them in the oven.

  2. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes until done.

  3. Remove from the oven, tear in halves, and return to the oven to crisp.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Coats the flour and makes the dough short and tender rather than tough.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once bound with eggs and sour cream.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which tenderises the crumb and reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the dough rise.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before baking. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour cream right away, releasing gas. If the dough waits, that lift is lost, so it should go in just before the cakes enter the oven.

“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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