Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Cream Cakes

A cake made from flour, lard, sugar, volatile salts, eggs, buttermilk, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scotch Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, lard, sugar, and volatile salts.

  2. Add eggs and mix well.

  3. Gradually incorporate buttermilk to form a dough.

  4. Flavor the dough with lemon essence to taste.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes.

  2. Bake the cakes.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 dough together as it bakes.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the cakes short.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during baking.
Volatile salts
Releases gas as it breaks down, helping the cakes rise and open up.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderise the dough and react with leavening.

The step that matters

Gradually incorporate buttermilk to form a dough. Adding too much liquid at once makes the dough sticky and hard to shape, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the dough just holds together, which keeps the cakes tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, buttermilk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes