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Dessert

Spider-cake

A griddle cake made from flour, butter, milk, and leavening, cooked in a buttered iron spider or griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spider-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar (or baking powder) together.

  2. Chop the butter into the flour mixture until crumbly.

  3. Add enough milk or cold water to form a stiff dough.

  4. If using sour milk, omit the baking powder or cream of tartar and add baking soda to the sour milk.

Cook

  1. Grease two old-fashioned iron spiders or a large griddle with butter and heat over medium heat.

  2. Shape the dough into two round cakes and place them in the buttered pans.

  3. Cook slowly, browning the underside, lifting frequently to prevent burning.

  4. Once browned, turn the cakes to brown the other side.

Serve

  1. When done, split the cakes, butter them, reassemble, cut into quarters, and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Chopped into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Milk or cold water
Hydrates the flour so the mixture comes together into a stiff dough.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar or sour milk to leaven the dough.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, lifting frequently. Cooking over medium heat and lifting the cakes often lets the interior cook through while the underside browns evenly, preventing scorching before the cakes are done.

“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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