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Dessert

Whigs for Tea, or Breakfast

A baked batter cake made with milk, butter, eggs, yeast, and flour.

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

Whigs for Tea, or Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Warm the milk and butter together until the butter melts.

  2. In a bowl, combine the warm milk and melted butter with the eggs and yeast.

  3. Add flour gradually to form a batter.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the batter rise for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Pour the batter into ring molds and bake for 15 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Milk
Supplies moisture and softness, and helps the batter form a pourable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Yeast
Ferments during the rise, producing gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the risen batter's shape while it bakes.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise. The yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas. Too short a rise leaves the batter dense, while a rise that runs too long can over-expand and collapse, so the batter should be allowed to rise fully before baking.

“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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