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Breakfast

Breakfast-cakes

A yeasted cake made with flour, butter, eggs, and milk, baked in a Dutch oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Breakfast-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Method one

  1. Rub the butter into the flour with salt and yeast in a bowl.

  2. Let the dough rise for 1 hour in a warm place.

  3. Mix in the eggs and enough milk to form a dough.

  4. Knead well and let it rest for a few minutes.

  5. Divide the dough into 5 cakes.

  6. Bake the cakes lightly.

  7. Warm them in a Dutch oven before toasting.

Method two

  1. For the second method, melt the butter in warm milk.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix with barm and salt.

  3. Combine with the dried flour and beat until smooth.

  4. Let the mixture sponge for 2 hours.

  5. Pour into a cake pan.

  6. Bake for 1 hour.

Method three and finish

  1. For the third method, mix flour, butter, egg, milk, and salt into a paste.

  2. Let the paste rise in a warm place.

  3. Bake quickly.

  4. Cut the cake in half while hot.

  5. Butter the halves.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 main structure of the dough and sets the crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, so the dough becomes light and airy.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds softness.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas. If the dough is too cold, it rises slowly or not at all, leaving the cakes dense.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, 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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