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Dessert

Fried Drop Cakes

A batter-based fried cake made with flour, baking powder, sugar, milk, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the milk, then mix in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar) that have been sifted together.

  3. Stir in the melted butter.

Fry and drain

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into hot deep fat.

  2. Fry until light brown and cooked through, checking by piercing with a skewer or breaking apart.

  3. Remove with a skimmer and drain on brown paper.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that sets the batter around the frying fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light and airy.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter so the cakes hold their shape.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and give the batter a soft, pourable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown lightly as they fry.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fry until cooked through. The cakes are dropped into hot fat and brown quickly on the outside, so the inside can stay raw. Checking with a skewer or by breaking one apart confirms the centre is fully cooked before removing them.

“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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