Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Rte Drop Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Mix together the milk, beaten eggs, butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and sugar.
Add enough rye meal to create a thick batter.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together918 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the heat.
- Rye meal
- Forms the batter's body, and its starch sets during baking to give the cakes structure.
- Cream of tartar
- An acid that reacts with baking soda to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
- Baking soda
- An alkaline base that reacts with the acid to produce carbon dioxide for lift.
- Milk
- Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the batter moist.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
The step that matters
Add enough rye meal to create a thick batter. The batter needs to be thick enough to hold its shape when dropped. Too much liquid relative to flour gives a loose batter that spreads and bakes flat and dense, while the starch in the flour is what sets the structure as the cakes cook.
“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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