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Dessert

Batter Cakes

A cake made with sour milk, flour, baking soda, eggs, butter, and salt.

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 ↓

Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the salt, melted butter, and sour milk.

  2. Sift the baking soda into the flour and mix it into the wet ingredients.

  3. Just before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased cake pans and bake until golden.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the batter.
Eggs
Egg yolks add richness and structure, while whipped whites add lift and airiness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites just before baking. Egg white foam traps air that gives lift. Folding gently preserves those bubbles, and waiting until just before baking keeps the leavening reaction from losing strength while the batter sits.

“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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