Skip to main content
Dessert

Afternoon Tea Cakes

A light pastry cake made with flour, butter, egg yolk, baking powder, sugar, and milk, baked and buttered.

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 into the flour mixture.

Shape and bake

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

  2. Bake until partly done, then brush with milk.

Serve

  1. Cut open and butter before serving.

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

Pastry flour
Provides the main structure once wet, setting the cakes' crumb as they bake.
Butter
Coats flour particles when rubbed in, giving a tender, crumbly texture and rich flavour.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, and helps bind the dough while enriching its colour and flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, lifting and lightening the cakes as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough, and promotes browning on the surface.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and fine sugar that tenderises the crumb and helps browning.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolk with the milk and mix quickly into the flour mixture.. Working wet dough develops gluten, which toughens the cakes. Mixing the liquid in quickly and only until combined keeps the texture short and tender, and helps the baking powder stay active.

“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