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Buttermilk Tea Cakes

A quick baked cake made with buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the buttermilk until frothy.

  2. Mix in the baking powder and baking soda.

  3. Add flour gradually until the batter reaches muffin consistency.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake quickly in gem pans.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift and lighten the tea cakes as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce gas, adding rise and light browning.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the batter's air and gas as the cakes set.

The step that matters

Bake quickly in gem pans. Baking powder and baking soda start releasing gas as soon as they meet liquid, so the batter should go into the pans and oven without delay to keep that gas for rise.

“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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