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Yorkshire Cakes

Yorkshire cakes are small, yeasted cakes made from flour, butter, milk, yeast, and eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Yorkshire Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in the milk.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a small amount of warm milk and strain it into the butter and milk mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs well and mix everything together.

  4. Add more milk if needed to form a light dough.

  5. Set the dough by the fire to rise.

Shape and bake

  1. Work the dough well and shape it into cakes.

  2. Place the cakes on tins and let them rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

  3. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C) and bake the cakes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough and sets the crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cakes a tender texture.
Milk
Provides moisture to bind the dough and soften the crumb.
German yeast
Produces gas during rising, giving the cakes a light, airy texture.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, helping the dough bind together.

The step that matters

Working the dough and letting it rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas, so the dough must rise fully before baking. Underproofed dough stays dense, while overproofed dough can collapse in the oven.

“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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