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Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Yorkshire tea cakes are yeast‑leavened cakes made with flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Tea Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.

  2. Cream the yeast and sugar together.

  3. Melt the butter, add the milk, and warm it until tepid.

  4. Mix the warm milk and butter with the yeast and sugar.

  5. Beat the egg and add it to the wet ingredients.

  6. Pour the wet mixture into the flour and mix well.

Shape and rise

  1. Flour two round cake tins and form the mixture into two round cakes.

  2. Place one cake in each tin and let them rise in a warm place until they reach the top of the tins.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. For buns, let the mixture rise for about an hour, shape into buns, and let them prove for 15 minutes before baking.

  3. Brush the buns with a mixture of butter and milk just before they are 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. 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and traps the gas produced by the yeast.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the dough become soft and tender.
Egg
Adds moisture and richness and helps bind the dough.

The step that matters

Warming the milk and butter until tepid. Yeast works best at lukewarm temperatures. If the liquid is too hot it can kill the yeast, and if it is too cold the dough will rise slowly.

“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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