Skip to main content
Dessert

Indian Breakfast Cakes

A quick oven-baked cake made with buttermilk, eggs, butter, salt, baking soda, and fine Indian flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Indian Breakfast Cakes

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, eggs, butter, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in fine Indian flour until the batter reaches a proper consistency.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans about 1 inch deep.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Buttermilk or sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Fine indian flour
Provides the main body that holds the cakes together as they set.

The step that matters

Get the batter into the oven promptly. Baking soda starts reacting with the acid in buttermilk as soon as they meet, releasing gas that lifts the cakes. Stirring only until the batter is right and baking without delay keeps that lift from fading.

“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.

You might also like

Buttermilk PieButtermilk Pie12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes