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Dessert

Dropped Fried Cakes

A batter of eggs, sugar, milk, butter, baking powder, and flour is dropped into hot oil and fried until golden.

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 ↓

Dropped Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the sweet milk, melted butter, and baking powder; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick enough to drop from a spoon.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat oil in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides, then remove and drain on paper towels.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a soft, workable consistency.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cakes rise and turn light inside.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into cakes as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the cakes absorb grease and turn heavy and pale. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the inside cooks through with a golden crust.

“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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