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Dessert

Yorkshire Parkins

A sweet oatcake made with oatmeal, treacle, butter, flour, sugar, spices, and baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Parkins

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the oatmeal and flour together.

  2. Rub in the butter lightly.

  3. Add the sugar, spice, and ginger.

  4. Melt the treacle and stir it into the mixture.

  5. Dissolve the soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.

  6. Add more milk if needed to make a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the mixture into small flat cakes.

  2. Brush the cakes with milk.

  3. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for about 45 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. Butter + flourtop 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. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Coarse oatmeal
Provides the bulk and a hearty, crumbly texture to the cakes.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, helping the cakes hold together.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cakes tender and short when rubbed into the flour.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the treacle's acidity to lift and lighten the cakes as they bake.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Dissolving the soda in milk before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly spread through the dough so it reacts with the acidic treacle. Lumps leave bitter, uneven patches and pockets that do not rise properly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk. 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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