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Dessert

Milk Cakes

Milk Cakes are a yeast-based cake made with flour, milk, water, thick cream, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Milk Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bases

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour and a little salt with enough thick cream to form a soft paste.

  3. Roll out the paste very thin and cut into rounds the size of a small plate.

  4. Prick the rounds with a biscuit pricker and bake in the hot oven.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water.

  2. Heat the milk and water to 100°F (38°C) and gradually add the flour to make a very thin batter.

  3. Add salt and a handful of sugar, then more flour if needed.

  4. Let the batter stand for half an hour, then stir well.

Cook the milk cakes

  1. Ladle the batter onto a hot plate to bake, turning each one over when half done.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the structure of both the soft paste and the batter once cooked.
Yeast
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the cakes light and airy.
Milk
Adds richness, softness and browning to the batter.
Thick cream
Adds fat, making the paste soft and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand, then stir well. The batter needs time for the yeast to ferment and build gas for a light texture. Stirring afterward knocks some gas out evenly, so the batter cooks to a consistent crumb.

“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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