Skip to main content
Baking

Light Cakes

Light cakes made with flour, milk, yeast, egg, butter, and salt, baked in a greased iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Light Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the milk.

  2. Beat the egg and add it to the milk mixture.

  3. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  4. Stir in the milk, egg, and yeast until a smooth batter forms.

  5. Place the bowl in a warm area and let the batter rise until it doubles in size.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare a greased baking iron on the stove.

  2. Pour small quantities of batter onto the baking iron.

  3. Once set, turn the cakes with a knife.

  4. Serve hot with butter or syrup.

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. 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. Egg + buttertop 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 that holds the cakes together as they set.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the cakes a light, airy texture.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set and hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps prevent sticking on the iron.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the batter into a pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until it doubles in size. Yeast needs a warm environment to produce gas. If the batter rises too little, the cakes will be dense rather than light, because the trapped gas is what creates their airy crumb.

“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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes