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Dessert

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Yorkshire Tea Cakes are small, buttery cakes made with flour, butter, eggs, milk, and yeast, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Yorkshire Tea 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 dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, milk, and yeast, and mix until a dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough and cover it, then set it aside to rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into ten pieces, roll each thin, and cut into rounds.

  2. Set the rounds aside to rise again.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  4. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the rounds together.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help bind it.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives a soft texture.
German yeast
Produces gas during rising, leavening the dough so the tea cakes become light.

The step that matters

Setting the rounds to rise again. The second rise gives the yeast time to inflate the thin rounds before baking. If they are under-proofed, the cakes stay dense; over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven, so watch for a visibly puffed, airy shape.

“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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