Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓
Plain Twisted Fried Cakes Without Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a bowl, combine the egg, sour milk, cream, baking soda, and salt.
Gradually add flour until the mixture forms a dough that can be rolled out.
Shape and fry
Roll the dough to your desired thickness and cut into shapes.
Heat deep lard in a frying pan and fry the dough shapes until golden brown.
Serve warm or cold, optionally with maple syrup.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Milk and flour 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
- Egg
- Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the fried cakes.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the dough.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to make the cakes rise and turn tender.
- Cream
- Adds fat and moisture, giving a softer, richer crumb.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.
The step that matters
Frying the dough shapes until golden brown. Hot fat must be deep enough to cook the centre as the outside browns. If the fat is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside darkens before the inside cooks.
“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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