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Dessert

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Yorkshire tea cakes are small yeasted cakes made with flour, yeast, butter, milk, sugar, salt, and egg, baked in greased tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast with 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  2. Warm the butter and milk together, then stir into the yeast mixture.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt, then add the yeast mixture and the beaten egg.

  4. Mix to form a light dough.

Shape and rise

  1. Half fill two small greased cake tins with the dough.

  2. Allow the dough to rise in the tins for 1 hour.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Brush the tops with sweetened milk and dry the glaze for 1 minute in the oven.

  3. Carefully turn out onto a sieve to cool.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and yeast.

The step that matters

Allowing the dough to rise in the tins. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas; rising for the full hour lets the dough expand and become light, so under-proofed dough bakes up dense.

“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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