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Dessert

Maple Caramel Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla, milk, maple sugar, and egg whites, topped with maple caramel frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 ↓

Maple 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.

Make the cake batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Beat in the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the milk.

  5. Add the flour sifted with baking powder.

  6. Beat thoroughly.

  7. Stir in the vanilla.

  8. Bake in layers or a loaf at 350°F (175°C).

Make the maple icing

  1. Break the maple sugar into small pieces.

  2. Place the sugar in a saucepan with boiling water.

  3. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  4. Boil without stirring until the syrup threads when dropped from a spoon.

  5. Pour the syrup gradually onto the beaten egg whites.

  6. Beat constantly until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake up as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Egg yolks add richness and emulsify the batter, while whites add lift and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a smooth, pourable texture.
Maple sugar
Cooked to a syrup and beaten into egg whites to form a soft, sweet maple icing.

The step that matters

Boil the maple syrup without stirring until it threads. Stirring can cause sugar to crystallise, making the syrup grainy. Stopping at the right stage matters because the syrup's concentration controls how the icing sets when beaten into the egg whites.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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