Skip to main content
Dessert

Afternoon Tea Cakes

Light cakes made with Vienna flour, butter, sugar, egg yolk, baking powder, and milk, baked and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Afternoon Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the baking powder to the remaining flour.

  3. Mix in the castor sugar.

  4. Beat the egg yolk with the milk and mix quickly.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into fancy shapes.

  2. Brush with milk when partly baked.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, split and buttered.

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

Vienna flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that rubs into the flour and gives a tender, crumbly texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, so the cakes rise.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture to the dough and browns the surface when brushed on.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolk with the milk and mix quickly. Once the baking powder is wet it starts releasing gas, so the dough should be mixed quickly and not worked. Overworking develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cakes tough instead of light.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes