Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Vanity Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Beat the eggs well in a bowl.
Add a pinch of salt and enough flour to form a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough thinly for wafers.
Cut out shapes with a small biscuit cutter.
Roll each piece as thin as possible.
Fry and serve
Heat drippings or lard in a pan.
Test the fat by adding a small piece of bread; it should brown quickly.
Fry the cakes until they are a delicate brown and crisp with bubbles.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the thin cakes.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the stiff dough that gives the cakes their structure once fried.
- Drippings or lard
- Fries the cakes, conducting heat and promoting browning and crispness.
The step that matters
Test the fat by adding a small piece of bread; it should brown quickly.. Frying fat that is too cool lets thin dough soak up oil and turn greasy instead of crisp. A fat hot enough to brown bread quickly seals the surface and gives a crisp, delicately browned cake.
“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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