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Dessert

Fried Cakes

Fried cakes are made from sweet milk, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Rub together the sugar and butter.

  2. Mix in the eggs and salt, then add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the wet mixture.

  4. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut with a round cutter, removing the center.

  2. Place on floured pans covered with muslin.

  3. Fry in smoking hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Drain on a wire rack.

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 + 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together after frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough and adding tenderness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Fry in smoking hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the cakes puff and brown evenly rather than soaking up oil.

“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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