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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried cake made with coffee, sugar, lard, ginger, eggs, milk, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub together the sugar, lard, and ginger.

  2. Add the eggs and sweet milk, then mix in the baking powder.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is workable on a floured surface.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut out shapes with a cutter that has a hole in the center.

  2. Heat lard in a pan and drop in the cakes, turning them only once.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and carries the heat in the frying pan.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is worked to a workable texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture, hydrating the flour so the dough holds together.

The step that matters

Turning the cakes only once. Flipping fried dough repeatedly lets oil and steam escape and can make the surface greasy or uneven. Turning once lets a crust set on each side so the cakes keep their shape and absorb less fat.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, egg, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, egg, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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