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Dessert

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

A yeasted cake made with flour, butter, milk, sugar, yeast, egg, and salt, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Combine flour, salt, and butter in a bowl and rub together until no lumps remain.

  2. Mix sugar and yeast in another bowl until dissolved, then pour tepid milk into the mixture and strain it into the flour mixture.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

Shape and rise

  1. Grease cake tins and fill them with the batter, then place them in a warm spot to rise for 1 hour.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack or plate; the cakes can be sliced and toasted as desired.

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. 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cakes together as the dough sets in the oven.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and give the cakes an open texture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the flavour of the cakes.
Tepid milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and gives a soft, tender crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough and set the crumb when baked.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise fully before baking. Yeast needs a warm, undisturbed period to produce gas. If the cakes are baked before they have risen, they will be dense because the gas that gives lightness has not yet formed.

“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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