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Dessert

New-england Fried-cakes

Fried cakes made from light bread dough, dusted with flour, fried until golden and served with syrup or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,540 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

New-england Fried-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. On a floured surface, roll out the bread dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into long diamond-shaped pieces using a sharp knife dipped in flour.

  3. Cover the pieces with a towel and let them rise near the stove.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the frying fat until it smokes.

  2. Fry the dough pieces until golden brown, then serve with syrup or molasses.

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. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + syruptop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Bread dough
Forms the body of the cakes, and its yeast rises to make them light and airy.
Fat for frying
Conducts heat to cook the dough quickly and browns its surface.

The step that matters

Let the pieces rise before frying. Resting lets the yeast produce gas that puffs the dough. Frying unrisen pieces yields dense, heavy cakes instead of light ones.

“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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