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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried cakes are made from flour, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and lard, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Cakes

Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub the lard, sugar, cinnamon, and baking powder into the flour until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix with the milk.

  3. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the flour mixture and mix thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Fry the shapes 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour for tenderness and used as the hot frying fat that browns the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the cakes rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly on the outside. Hot fat seals the surface fast, so the inside cooks through with little oil soaking in.

“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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