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Fried Cakes

Fried cakes made from eggs, sweet milk, sugar, spices, baked in lard and coated with fine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sweet milk.

  2. Add the sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda, and spices; mix well.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut it into shapes.

Fry and coat

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the cut shapes in the boiling lard until golden brown.

  3. While hot, dip the fried cakes in fine sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the dough can be rolled and cut.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly. Keeping the fat at a steady boil seals the surface and gives a crisp, evenly colored cake.

“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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