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Dessert

Egg Cake with Brown Bread

A cake made from eggs, flour, milk, sugar, salt, brown bread, and palmine, baked in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Egg Cake with Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl and add part of the milk, mixing well.

  2. Add the egg yolks and beat until well combined.

  3. For each yolk, add 2 large tablespoons of milk, a little salt, and a small teaspoon of sugar.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Fry the bread

  1. Fry the brown bread in palmine until done.

  2. Remove the bread from the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the prepared batter into the same pan.

  2. Bake slowly.

  3. When the batter begins to stiffen, lay the slices of brown bread on top.

  4. Add a few pieces of palmine.

  5. Flip to bake the other side.

  6. Serve with castor sugar.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites trap air that helps the cake rise and stay light.
Flour
Forms the starch and protein structure that holds the batter together as it sets.
Skimmed milk
Adds moisture and thins the batter so it mixes smoothly and bakes through.
Brown bread
Slices set into the batter, adding body and a chewy, firmer texture.
Palmine
Fat that fries the bread and adds richness and browning to the surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give the batter lift. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the cake bakes denser and rises less.

“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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