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Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Yorkshire tea cakes are small, yeasted cakes made with flour, milk, lard, and yeast, baked after rising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yorkshire Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Cream the sugar and yeast together.

  2. Melt the lard in a saucepan, then pour the milk onto it and make it lukewarm.

  3. Pour the lukewarm mixture onto the yeast and sugar.

  4. Strain the yeast and milk mixture into the flour, add the beaten egg, and mix well.

  5. Flour a board and turn the dough onto it, then beat it and cut it into cakes.

Rise and bake

  1. Grease the rings and place the cakes inside, allowing them to rise for one hour.

  2. Bake the cakes for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Coomb's flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cakes their structure.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the dough and helping it set when baked.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
German yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise, giving the cakes their light texture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and softens the texture.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Lukewarm milk and lard mixture. If the liquid is too hot it can kill the yeast, and if it is cold the yeast will work slowly. Lukewarm liquid lets the yeast become active and the dough rise 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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