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Dessert

Hovis Cream Cakes

A baked cake made with Hovis flour, lard, milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hovis Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the Hovis flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Cut in the lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Gradually add the milk. Mix until a dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes.

  2. Place the cakes on an iron plate.

  3. Bake until half cooked. Turn the cakes over.

  4. Continue baking until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Hovis flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acid that reacts with the baking soda, helping the cakes rise.
Lard
Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderizing the crumb and keeping it short.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture binds into a dough.

The step that matters

Turning the cakes over partway through baking. Baking until half cooked and then turning the cakes lets both faces brown evenly and set without one side scorching or staying pale. Turning too late can leave the underside doughy.

“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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