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 ↓
Coffee Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Dissolve the baking soda in warm water.
In a bowl, mix the sour milk, dissolved baking soda, melted lard, and pastry flour.
Transfer the mixture to a floured surface and cover with a bowl.
Let it rest for about 15 minutes.
Shape and fry
Roll out the dough, cut it into strips, and twist them.
Fry the twisted strips in hot lard until golden.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda and gives the dough a tangy flavor.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that lightens the dough.
- Pastry flour
- Low-protein flour that forms a tender, delicate structure rather than a chewy one.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and, when frying, browns the strips and adds flavor.
The step that matters
Fry in hot lard until golden. If the lard is not hot enough, the strips soak up oil and turn greasy and heavy. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the strips brown evenly and stay light inside.
“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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