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Yorkshire Tea Cakes

A yeasted quick bread made with flour, lard or butter, milk, yeast, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

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

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. Mix flour and salt, then rub lard into the mixture.

  2. Dissolve yeast with sugar, add ½ pint warm milk, and pour into the center of the flour.

  3. Mix slightly, sprinkle a little dry flour over the top, and let stand in a warm place for 1 hour to rise.

  4. Knead dough while adding the rest of the warm milk and the baking powder, then set to rise another hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide dough into 10 portions, roll each into a round cake, and place on a warm surface to rise for 1 hour.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Lard or butter
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and a short texture.
German yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and yeast, forming a soft, workable dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, adding extra lift to the cakes.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast works slowly in cold conditions and can be killed by overly hot liquid. A warm, draft-free spot lets the gas build steadily so the cakes rise properly before baking.

“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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