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Dessert

Burnt Sugar Cake

A cake made with burnt sugar, butter, eggs, flour, and a burnt sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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.

Make the syrup

  1. Burn ½ cup of sugar until it turns a good brown color.

  2. Carefully add ¼ cup of hot water and boil for a few minutes to create syrup.

Make and bake the cake

  1. In a bowl, cream ½ cup of butter with 1½ cups of sugar.

  2. Add 4 eggs (reserve 2 whites for frosting) and beat thoroughly.

  3. Mix in 1 cup of cold water.

  4. Sift together 2½ cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3 teaspoons of burnt sugar, mixing well.

  6. Bake in three layers at 350°F (175°C).

Make the frosting

  1. For frosting, boil 1½ cups of sugar with ½ cup of water until a drop in cold water is firm.

  2. Pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites, beating constantly.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3 teaspoons of burnt sugar, beating until thick enough to spread.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds tenderness and richness through creaming with sugar.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's main structure once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cake layers rise.
Burnt sugar
Gives the cake its caramel flavor and brown color.

The step that matters

Beating the frosting until thick enough to spread. Beaten egg whites with hot sugar syrup form a stable foam that thickens as it cools and is beaten. Stopping too early leaves a runny frosting that will not hold its shape on the cake.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, butter, 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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