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Dessert

American Potash Cakes

A simple biscuit made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, and a leavening agent.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

American Potash Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix flour and butter together.

  2. Dissolve sugar in milk and add to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve cream of tartar or baking soda in cold water and add to the mixture.

  4. Work the mixture into a good consistency.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll it out and form into cakes or biscuits.

  2. Bake in a brisk oven.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Forms the main structure of the dough as its proteins and starch set on baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the cakes short.
Milk
Provides moisture and helps bind the dough together.
Cream of tartar or baking soda
Reacts to lighten the dough and help it rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Dissolving the cream of tartar or baking soda in the water. Leavening works only when the acid and alkali are evenly distributed through the dough, so an undissolved lump can leave bitter patches or uneven rising. Mixing it fully into the water before adding it helps spread it through the whole batch.

“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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