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Rye Drop Cakes

A quick rye drop cake made with sour milk, egg, baking soda, and rye meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rye Drop Cakes

Why it works: Milk and rye work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Rye Drop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the sour milk, rye meal, and egg together.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately on a hot griddle or in 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + ryetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk, releasing carbon dioxide that makes the cakes rise.
Rye meal
Forms the body of the batter and gives the cakes their structure and earthy flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as the cakes set.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the gas bubbles that lift the cakes begin escaping while the batter waits. A hot griddle or pan sets the structure quickly while the lift is still active.

“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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