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Dessert

Layer Cake with Sour Cream Filling

A layered cake made with a batter of sugar, eggs, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and a sour cream, raisin, and nut filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Layer Cake with Sour Cream Filling

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the melted butter and milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift the baking powder with the flour and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the vanilla extract.

  6. Pour the batter into two greased cake pans.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the filling, combine the whipped sour cream, chopped raisins, and chopped nuts.

  3. Once the cakes are cool, layer them with the sour cream filling in between.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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 as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sour cream
Whipped and sweetened, it adds moisture and a tangy richness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Checking the bake. Cakes can dry out or sink if removed too early or left too long. A toothpick coming out clean shows the centre has set, so the crumb stays moist and holds its shape once cooled.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour, vanilla, cream. 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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