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Dessert

Sour Cream Nut Cake

A loaf cake made with sour cream, sugar, egg, flour, salt, baking soda, walnuts, and a flavoring extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sour Cream Nut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the sour cream, sugar, and egg.

  3. Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, and mix until smooth.

  4. Fold in the chopped walnuts and flavor with Royce's extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake for nearly 1 hour.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set into a firm crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavor to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moist.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour, salt, and baking soda. Mixing only until smooth keeps the batter from becoming overworked. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense rather than tender.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, 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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