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Dessert

New England Drop Cakes

Drop cakes made with rye flour, cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, molasses, sour milk, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

New England Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the rye flour, cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, molasses, salt, baking soda dissolved in hot water, and sour milk until well combined.

Fry the cakes

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into deep, boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and cooked through.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Provides the dense, earthy structure and flavor characteristic of this batter.
Cornmeal
Adds a grainy texture and helps the cakes hold a crisp exterior.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cakes as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color, and a rich flavor to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds a tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into boiling lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside of each cake quickly. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs grease and turns heavy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

“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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