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Dessert

Dark Molasses Cakes

A simple cake made with dark molasses, sour milk, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dark Molasses Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the molasses and sour milk to the egg and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

  4. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, beating well.

Cook

  1. Preheat a griddle and lightly grease it.

  2. Cook the batter on the griddle, ensuring it is not too hot to prevent burning.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter together.
Dark molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and a deep flavor.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening.
Flour
Provides the structure of the cake.
Baking powder
Produces gas that makes the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to help the cake rise and brown.

The step that matters

Cook the batter on the griddle. If the griddle is too hot, the outside browns or burns before the inside sets and cooks through. Medium heat lets the centre cook evenly.

“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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