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Dessert

Milk Cakes

Milk Cakes are a sweet pastry made with flour, sugar, lard, buttermilk, eggs, currants, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Milk Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the carbonate of soda and cream of tartar into the flour.

  2. Rub in the lard, then add the sugar and currants.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the buttermilk.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the dry ingredients.

Shape and bake

  1. On a floured board, roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  2. Before baking, brush the tops with a mixture of the remaining eggs and buttermilk.

  3. Bake 6 to 8 cakes on a baking sheet.

  4. Turn the cakes over halfway through baking, as they need to be cooked on both sides.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar and buttermilk acid to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with the carbonate of soda to leaven the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes as its proteins set during baking.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour, it shortens the dough, giving a tender, crumbly texture.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the carbonate of soda and moistens the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and richness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Turn the cakes over halfway through baking. Heat from the baking sheet cooks the underside faster, so turning them ensures both sides bake evenly and the cakes set through.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cream, 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.

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