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Dessert

Passover Cakes

A baked cake made from biscuit powder, matzo flour, milk, water, butter, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Passover Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Make a stiff paste with biscuit powder, milk, and water.

  2. Add butter, egg yolk, and white sugar.

  3. Cut into pieces and mold with your hands.

Bake the cakes

  1. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until not too thin.

Make the matzo batter

  1. Warm 1 pint of water flavored with salt.

  2. Mix 4 beaten eggs with matzo flour and milk.

  3. Combine all together.

Finish in a tin

  1. Bake in a tin.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Biscuit powder
Provides the starch and flour base that turns the liquid into a stiff, shapeable paste.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the heat.
Matzo flour
Supplies the starchy body that holds the batter together and sets it into a cake.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a richer flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flours and keeps the dough soft.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking in a brisk oven. A hot 400°F oven sets the outside quickly so the cakes hold their shape. The record says to bake until they are not too thin, so watch the thickness rather than the clock.

“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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