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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

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 ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture until combined.

  5. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick.

Fry and serve

  1. Cut into desired shapes and fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, giving lift and a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network and sets the structure of the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of crisping. Too hot and the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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