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Dessert

Slim Cakes for Breakfast or Tea

A thin, dough-based cake made with flour, eggs, butter, salt, and milk, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Slim Cakes for Breakfast or Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, beaten eggs, butter, and salt.

  2. Add warmed milk gradually until a stiff paste forms.

  3. Work the mixture well, cover it, and let it sit near the fire for 30 minutes.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into round cakes using a small saucer or tumbler.

  2. Cook the cakes in a clean frying pan, dusting them lightly with flour.

  3. Alternatively, bake them on a hot iron plate or girdle.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough, setting the cakes' body as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the texture and adds flavor to the cakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture becomes a workable, stiff paste.

The step that matters

Resting the dough near the fire. Resting lets the flour fully hydrate and the gluten relax, which makes the dough easier to roll and gives a more tender cake. Letting it sit too short leaves it tight and hard to shape.

“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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