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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried dough cake made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, milk, nutmeg, lemon flavoring, flour, and baking powder.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk, nutmeg, and lemon flavoring; mix well.

  3. Sift the flour with baking powder and combine with the wet ingredients to form a soft dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick and cut with a fruit cake cutter.

  2. Fry the cut dough immediately until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich in flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the cakes as they fry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cut dough immediately. Once cut, the dough begins to lose its rising power as the baking powder reacts with moisture. Frying straight away keeps the cakes light and helps them brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, nutmeg, flour. 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.

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