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Bread

Malted Cakes or Fancy Bread

A yeast-based bread made with flour, malt flour, sugar, fruit, fat, optional egg and milk, baked into rolls or loaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Malted Cakes or Fancy Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour and malt flour thoroughly without kneading.

  2. Gash the top and cover the dough, protecting it from draughts.

  3. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead lightly and shape into rolls or loaves.

  2. If using tinned loaves, bake for about 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

  3. For rock buns, mix stiffly without adding liquid, using the specified ingredients.

  4. For cakes in tins, add a little milk if desired.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Malt + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten network builds to hold the rise.
Malt flour
Supplies enzymes that break down starch, feeding yeast and adding sweetness and flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Fat
Tenderises the crumb and adds richness to the finished bread.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. The dough needs a warm, draught-free place to rise until doubled. Cold or drafty conditions slow yeast activity, so the bread may come out dense and underproofed.

“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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