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Dessert

Plain Cake

A simple fried dough cake made with milk, butter, yeast, sugar, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plain Cake

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 ↓

Plain Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, butter, yeast, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Add flour gradually until a stiff batter forms.

  3. Cover and let the batter rise overnight.

Cook and serve

  1. In the morning, roll out the dough and cut into strips about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  2. Fry the strips in hot oil until golden brown, about 8 minutes.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the batter so it becomes light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter and dough together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the fried crust.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished cake.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and activates the yeast.

The step that matters

Frying the strips in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the strips absorb excess oil and turn greasy before browning. Oil that is too hot can scorch the outside while the centre stays raw. Steady heat gives a golden crust and a cooked interior.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, 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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