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Dessert

Small Egg Cake

A small cake made from flour, milk, eggs, butter, and a pinch of salt, fried until light brown.

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

Small Egg Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour and milk together until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  3. Add a pinch of salt.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a froth and fold them into the mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture on both sides until light brown.

  3. Serve with spinach.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking, giving the cake its body.
Egg whites
Beaten to a froth, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and helps the cakes brown.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the flour into a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Fry spoonfuls of the mixture on both sides until light brown. The batter is thin and airy, so cooking over too high a heat can scorch the outside before the centre sets. Moderate heat lets the inside cook through while the surface browns evenly.

“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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