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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A sweet cake with a caramel filling made from butter, sugar, milk, nuts, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Caramel 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the milk, sugar, and butter in a saucepan for 10 minutes without stirring.

  2. Remove from heat, add the nuts and almond extract, and beat until cool 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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and tenderness to the cake and filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and filling, and helps brown the milk mixture as it cooks.
Milk
Provides moisture and, when boiled with sugar and butter, builds the body of the filling.
Nuts
Add crunch and texture to the cooled filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling without stirring. Milk, sugar, and butter cooked together can scorch on the bottom or form grainy crystals if stirred or left too hot. Boiling undisturbed lets the sugar and milk proteins thicken and caramelize evenly into a smooth base.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, vanilla, milk, almond. 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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Chocolate 16Filling 11Potato 9Maple 4 See all 114 →

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