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Dessert

Tea Cakes

A small cake made from butter, milk, yeast, sugar, eggs, flour, and salt, baked in a moderate oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Tea Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter and stir it into the tepid milk.

  2. Mix in the yeast, salt, sugar, and eggs.

  3. Strain the mixture onto the flour and beat well.

  4. Let the dough rise for 30 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the dough and place it into tins.

  2. Allow the cakes to rise well before baking in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen dough together.
Fresh german yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for softness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the yeast.

The step that matters

Allow the cakes to rise well before baking. Yeast needs time to produce gas in the shaped dough. Baking before the cakes have risen fully can leave them dense, because the structure has not expanded and set in the oven.

“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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