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Dessert

Fried Cakes Without Eggs or Milk

A quick batter of lard, water, salt, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, sugar, and optional nutmeg, fried into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes Without Eggs or Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the lard in hot water.

  2. Add the salt and mix in the baking soda and cream of tartar smoothly.

  3. Incorporate enough sifted flour to form a batter.

  4. Stir in the sugar and nutmeg if desired.

Shape and fry

  1. Work the dough quickly and thoroughly.

  2. Roll out the dough thinly, cut into round cakes, and fry immediately.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the baking soda to create lift and a lighter texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it fries.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the fried cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown as they fry.

The step that matters

Fry immediately after cutting. Once the baking soda and cream of tartar are mixed with liquid, gas begins forming and the leavening starts working. Waiting before frying lets that lift fade, so the cakes can turn out flat and dense.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, coffee, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, coffee, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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