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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, baking powder, and a chocolate custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the custard

  1. For the custard, combine chocolate, milk, sugar, and egg yolk in a saucepan and cook until thickened, then stir in vanilla.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and the cooled custard.

  5. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add it to the mixture.

  6. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once the cake is cool, frost with chocolate icing if desired.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and whipped whites help the cake rise and stay light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and creaming it with sugar traps air for texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown, and creaming with butter aerates the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before baking leads to a dense, flat cake.

“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.

More caramel cake recipes

Chocolate 16Filling 11Potato 9Maple 4 See all 114 →

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