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Yellow Chess Cake

"This is a very rich cake and it sells great at bake sales, as well as my little restaurant. When baked, the cherries go under and the cheese rises to the top."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,746 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The recipe

1 - 9x13
Prep20 min
Cook35 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C) and grease a 9x13-inch pan.

  2. Melt half of the butter and stir it into the dry yellow cake mix until crumbly. Press the mixture firmly into the bottom of the pan.

  3. Beat the cream cheese, the remaining softened butter, and the confectioners' sugar until smooth and fluffy.

  4. Spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the cake base.

  5. Bake for 35 minutes, until the edges are golden and the top is set.

  6. Cool completely in the pan. Spread the cherry pie filling over the top, then chill until serving.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + cream cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cream cheese + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  3. Butter + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + cherrytop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,522 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sugar + cherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together2,598 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Strawberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, cream cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).