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Breakfast

Newport Breakfast-cakes

A quick breakfast cake made from bread dough, eggs, butter, sugar, baking soda, and milk.

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 ↓

Newport Breakfast-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In the morning, take 1 quart of dough from the bread.

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of 3 eggs and whip both to a light froth. Mix the whipped eggs into the dough.

  3. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

  4. Add enough warm milk to achieve a batter consistency similar to buckwheat cakes.

  5. Beat the mixture well and let it rise until breakfast time.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat a griddle and grease it.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle in small round cakes and cook until light brown.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lift and a tender, airy crumb to the cakes.
Dough
Provides the base structure and a yeasted, bread-like flavour to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the dough to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour, softer texture and light browning on the griddle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown evenly on the griddle.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well and let it rise until breakfast time. Thorough beating and a long rise let the dough and leavening work together, giving the cakes a light, open texture instead of a dense one.

“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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