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Dessert

Fried Cakes

A sweet fried dough cake made with sugar, milk, butter, eggs, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

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 ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, sweet milk, butter, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and spice, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the cakes in hot lard until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so baking soda can react and lighten the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy instead of browning quickly. Frying at a steady high heat seals the surface and gives a crisp, golden exterior.

“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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