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Dessert

Nice Fried Cakes

A fried cake made with buttermilk, egg, sugar, ginger, baking soda, and flour, cooked in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Nice Fried Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, egg, sugar, butter, ginger, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough until soft enough to roll out.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the dough pieces in the 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.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the dough and adds tenderness.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the cakes.
White sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown in the hot fat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat that contributes flavour and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. The lard must be hot enough to fry the dough quickly; if it is too cool, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy instead of crisp and golden brown.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (buttermilk, egg, sugar, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, egg, sugar, butter, flour. 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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