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Dessert

Burnt Sugar Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, water, salt, baking powder, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Burnt Sugar 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with the water, and mix until smooth.

Make the burnt sugar

  1. For burnt sugar, boil 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of water for a few minutes until it caramelizes.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the burnt sugar to the cake batter and mix well.

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and develop flavour as it bakes.
Burnt sugar
Adds a deep caramel flavour and a darker colour to the batter.

The step that matters

Caramelising the burnt sugar. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes golden amber. Stop heating when it is deep amber, because overcooked sugar turns bitter and can spoil the cake's flavour.

“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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