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Caramel Filling for Cake

A caramel sauce made by boiling brown sugar, butter, and milk until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Caramel Filling for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter, and milk.

  2. Stir until dissolved, then boil for 5 minutes or until it forms small puffs.

  3. If it crystallizes, return it to the heat.

  4. Add a little more butter and milk.

  5. Boil again.

Cool and use

  1. Remove from heat and cool until it reaches the consistency of thick syrup.

  2. Cool as before.

  3. Spread the caramel on the layers of the cake.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and caramel flavour as it cooks and browns.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a buttery flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that give the sauce a creamy, softer texture.

The step that matters

Boiling and cooling to thick syrup. Sugar that cools too fast or is stirred after boiling can recrystallize and turn grainy. Heating again with a little butter and milk smooths the sauce back out, and slow cooling lets it thicken into a syrup rather than setting hard.

“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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