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Fried Bread Cakes

A fried cake made from soaked bread, eggs, salt, baking soda, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fried Bread Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread scraps in milk or a mixture of milk and water until soft.

  2. Mash the soaked bread finely.

  3. Add the eggs, salt, and baking soda, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate enough flour to form a very moist paste.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat and fry until light 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Bread scraps
Form the bulk of the cakes and absorb moisture, giving them a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas, helping the cakes rise and lighten.
Flour
Thickens the soaked bread into a paste that holds its shape when fried.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess oil and turn greasy before a crust forms. A hot fat sears the outside quickly, sealing in moisture and producing an even light brown color.

“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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