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Fried Cakes

A sweet fried dough made with milk, sugar, butter, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sweet milk and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, stirring until a dough forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour into a workable dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and carries flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, and enrich the dough.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with baking soda to help the dough rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release gas that lightens the dough.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown on both sides. Oil that is hot enough sets the outside quickly, limiting how much fat the cake absorbs. If the oil is too cool the cakes turn greasy, and if it is too hot the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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