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Curd Cakes

A fried cake made from curds, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curd Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the eggs (leaving out 4 whites) with the curds.

  2. Add sugar to taste, grated nutmeg, and flour; mix well.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the curd mixture into the pan and fry like fritters.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Eggs
Bind the curds and set into a tender, cohesive cake when fried.
Curds
Provide the main body and moisture of the cake.
Flour
Adds a little structure so the spoonfuls hold together in the pan.
Butter
Fat for frying that gives the cakes a golden, browned surface.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into the pan. The mixture is wet, so spoonfuls should be firm enough to hold their shape. Adding too much flour or too little heat can make them spread or cook unevenly. Medium heat in the butter sets the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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