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Dessert

Indian Suet Cake

A cake made with Indian meal, flour, suet, eggs, and milk, baked until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Indian Suet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the Indian meal, flour, baking soda, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolks together.

Make the batter

  1. Add the milk to the sugar and yolk mixture, then stir into the dry ingredients to form a batter.

  2. Fold in the chopped suet and the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour the batter into well-buttered pie plates or shallow cake pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until done, then score the top crust with a sharp knife in your desired pattern.

  2. Serve hot.

  3. This mixture can also be baked in muffin or gem pans.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Indian meal
Provides the coarse, crumbly structure and the characteristic texture of the cake.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and the whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Rich sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness and moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the cake moist and rich as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air that makes the batter light. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in, so the cake rises instead of turning dense.

“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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