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Dessert

Gems of Rye Meal

A small cake made with rye meal, white flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and baked in buttered pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Gems of Rye Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together rye meal, white flour, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir in sweet milk and sugar.

  3. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and beat well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Bake

  1. Heat gem pans.

  2. Brush with butter.

  3. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Rye meal
Provides the main body and a distinctive, earthy flavour to the cakes.
White flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a smooth, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and meal for a pourable batter.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown during baking.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until combined. Egg white foam holds the air that makes the cakes rise. Folding gently keeps that air in, while overmixing deflates the foam and leaves the cakes dense and flat.

“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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