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Dessert

Yankee Nut Cakes

Fried dough cakes made with flour, butter, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, and water, cooked in boiling lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yankee Nut Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, butter, brown sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture, along with a little water if necessary.

  3. Mix the dough well with a spoon and knead it until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough into a large thin sheet and cut it into long strips.

  2. Twist the strips and carefully place them into a dish of boiling lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown, turning them to cook evenly.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the twisted shape.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown, turning them to cook evenly.. The lard must be boiling hot before the twists go in. Hot fat seals the surface quickly so the cakes do not absorb grease, and turning them lets every side brown at the same rate.

“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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