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 ↓
Picnic Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the dough
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.
Stir in the cream of tartar and baking soda.
Gradually add flour until the mixture reaches a cookie-like consistency.
Shape and bake
Cut the dough into strips, roll them in powdered sugar, and twist into round cakes.
Place on a baking sheet and bake until lightly browned.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming with butter adds air.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas for rising and light texture.
- Flour
- Provides structure so the dough holds its shape once rolled and twisted.
The step that matters
Gradually add flour until cookie-like consistency. Adding too much flour at once or too little leaves the dough too sticky or too stiff to shape. Adding it gradually lets you stop at the right texture, which controls spread and tenderness in the baked cakes.
“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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