Skip to main content
Dessert

English Breakfast Cakes

A yeasted cake made with milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and flour, baked in buttered tins and served warm.

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 ↓

English Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk and butter until lukewarm.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and yeast to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour to form a dough, using more if necessary.

  4. Divide the dough into cakes and let them rise for 45 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the cakes in buttered tins until done.

  2. Cut the cakes to be used into slices, butter each side, and warm them for 1 minute before serving hot.

  3. For leftovers, warm and butter them in the same way.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and makes a soft, tender dough.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour, and browns the cakes in the tins.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help bind it together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the cakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rise for 45 minutes. Yeast needs time to produce gas and expand the dough. Rising too short leaves the cakes dense, while the dough must be shaped and covered so it does not dry out.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes