Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Gem Fried Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Mix sweet milk, sugar, eggs, melted butter, and baking powder in a bowl.
Gradually add flour until the dough is easy to roll out.
Roll out the dough to cookie thickness and cut into circles.
Fill and fry
Place a teaspoon of jam or jelly in the center of one circle, cover with another circle, and press edges together.
Fry in hot lard or clarified drippings until cooked through.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set during frying.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the dough, helping the cakes rise and turn light and puffy.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its body and rollable structure.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
- Jam or jelly
- Provides sweetness and fruity flavor in the sealed centre of each cake.
The step that matters
Pressing the edges together. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the jam can leak into the hot fat and the filling may escape during frying. A tight seal keeps the filling inside as the dough cooks.
“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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