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Dessert

Sour Cream Nut Cake

A layered cake with sour cream batter, sugar filling, and nut topping.

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

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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the sour cream and baking soda, mixing until smooth.

  4. Gradually fold in the sifted flour until just combined.

  5. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans.

  6. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil 1 cup of sugar with 2 tablespoons of water until it reaches a hair-like consistency. Remove from heat.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites, mixing until cool.

  3. Flavor the filling with lemon extract.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake.

  2. Top with chopped nuts.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sifted flour
Forms the cake's structure once the batter sets in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling sugar syrup. The syrup must reach the right concentration before the egg whites are added. Overcooking makes the filling hard and sticky, while underheating leaves it thin and runny. Pouring the syrup over the beaten whites gradually and beating until cool gives a smooth, stable filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, flour, nuts. 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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