Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine sour cream, sugar, eggs, and salt.
Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and baking powder three times.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.
Stir in lemon or vanilla extract.
Bake
Pour the batter into greased cake pans.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
- Eggs
- Provide structure as they set in the oven and help bind the batter.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
- Baking powder
- Adds additional lift as it releases gas when heated in the batter.
The step that matters
Sifting the dry ingredients three times and adding them gradually. Sifting breaks up lumps and mixes the leaveners evenly, so the cake rises uniformly. Adding the dry ingredients gradually and not overmixing keeps gluten development low, which helps prevent a tough, dense crumb.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, flour. 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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