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Dessert

Marg Aretha Fried Cakes

A fried cake made with eggs, sugar, lard, sour milk, baking soda, spices, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Marg Aretha Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and lard until well combined.

  2. Add the sour milk and baking soda, then mix until smooth.

  3. Season with spices and coarse sea salt to your taste.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is manageable.

Shape and fry

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

  2. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as it sets in the hot lard.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lighten the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, helping the cakes rise and stay tender.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and provides the hot medium that browns the cakes when frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the golden browning of the fried surface.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb grease and turn heavy and oily instead of crisping. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the inside cooks through with a light texture and a golden crust.

“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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