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Dessert

Butter Cakes

A simple batter of flour, butter, salt, milk, and baking powder cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together twice.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Mix in enough milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into round cakes.

Cook and serve

  1. Place on a greased griddle over medium heat.

  2. Cook until puffy and brown, then flip to brown the other side.

  3. Tear open, butter liberally, and serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes once hydrated with milk.
Butter
Coats the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the cakes rise and turn puffy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour into a soft dough.

The step that matters

Cooking on the griddle over medium heat. The outside browns quickly while the centre is still setting. Keeping the heat moderate lets the cakes puff and cook through before the first flip, rather than scorching on the outside.

“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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