Skip to main content
Main

Fried Cakes Without Eggs or Ivulk

A fried cake made without eggs, using lard, hot water, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, sugar, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes Without Eggs or Ivulk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the lard in hot water.

  2. Add salt and mix in baking soda and cream of tartar.

  3. Stir in enough sifted flour to make a batter.

  4. Add sugar and nutmeg if desired, and work the dough quickly.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough thin, cut into round cakes, and fry immediately.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cakes rise and lighten.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda, producing lift without eggs.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.

The step that matters

Work the dough quickly. Baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting as soon as they are wet, so the gas that lifts the cakes escapes if the dough sits. Rolling, cutting and frying promptly keeps the lift.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, coffee, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, coffee, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes