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Dessert

Pumpkin Cakes

A baked cake made with sour milk, cooked pumpkin, molasses, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and egg.

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

Pumpkin Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, cooked pumpkin, molasses, and flour.

  2. Thicken the mixture with cornmeal as needed.

  3. Add cream of tartar, baking soda, and the egg, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + pumpkintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with the leavening to lift the cakes.
Cooked pumpkin
Adds moisture and body to the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deeper flavor.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so the cakes hold their shape.
Cream of tartar
Acidic powder that reacts with baking soda to make the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk and cream of tartar to produce lift.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and cream of tartar. Both leaveners react as soon as they meet liquid, so the batter should be mixed well and baked promptly to keep the gas bubbles that make the cakes light.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, flour, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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