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Fried Cakes

A sweet fried cake made with eggs, sugar, lard, milk, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Add the sugar and beat until very light.

  3. Mix in the melted lard and sweet milk.

  4. Let the mixture stand for a few minutes, then stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Shape and fry

  1. Sift the baking powder with enough flour to make a soft dough and add it to the mixture.

  2. Roll out the dough and fry in hot lard.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb and aid browning.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cakes rise and lighten.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat for frying.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy and dense instead of browning quickly and cooking through. Hot fat seals the surface, which keeps the inside light.

“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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