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Dessert

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

A yeasted cake made with milk, flour, butter, egg, and German yeast, baked in tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Heat the milk in a small saucepan until warm.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in a basin with the warm milk.

  3. In a large basin, combine the flour and rub in the butter.

  4. Beat the egg in a cup and add it to the flour mixture.

  5. Strain the yeast and milk mixture into the basin and mix well with a wooden spoon.

  6. Flour a board and turn the dough out onto it.

  7. Flour your hands and knead the dough for 1-2 minutes.

Shape and rise

  1. Flour a knife and divide the dough into cakes.

  2. Grease cake tins with dripping and fill them three-quarters full with the dough.

  3. Allow the cakes to rise near the fire for 1 hour.

Bake and cool

  1. Preheat the oven to 240°F (115°C) and bake the cakes for 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the cakes out of the tins and cool them on a sieve or a cane chair.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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 dough structure that traps gas and gives the cakes their body.
German yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the cakes light and open-textured.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and, when warm, helps feed the yeast for the rise.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Egg
Enriches the dough, adding structure, colour and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rise fully before baking. Yeast gas expansion gives the cakes their lightness. Under-proofed dough stays dense and heavy, while the rise needs warmth to work properly.

“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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