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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A caramel cake with a pecan filling made from brown sugar, sweet milk, butter, and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  4. Gradually add the flour, sweet milk, and baking powder to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine brown sugar and sweet milk in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Once boiling, add the butter and boil until it drops from a spoon.

  3. Stir in the pecans and cook for a few more minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and beat until thick enough to spread between the cake layers.

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. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help the cake rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness and richness to the cake and body to the filling.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender, even crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Brown sugar
Cooked with milk and butter, it gives the filling its caramel flavor and thickness.

The step that matters

Beating the filling until thick. The filling must be beaten off the heat until it cools and thickens enough to spread. Spreading it too soon leaves it runny and it may soak into the layers.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

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