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Dessert

Sugar Cream Filling

A sweetened sour cream and walnut filling for cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sugar Cream Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Whip the sour cream until very stiff.

  2. Add the egg white and beat together until combined.

  3. Chop the walnuts very fine and stir them into the cream.

  4. Add the vanilla extract and stir until well mixed.

  5. Gradually add sugar until the filling tastes sweet.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of the cake and heap it on top.

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 + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Sour cream
Whipped to a stiff base that gives the filling body and a tangy flavour.
Egg white
Beaten into the cream to add a little structure and lightness to the filling.
Walnuts
Chopped fine to add crunch and a nutty flavour throughout the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances its tang; added to taste.

The step that matters

Whip the sour cream until very stiff. Sour cream must be whipped until thick so the filling holds its shape when spread and heaped. Under-whipped cream stays loose and runs out from between the cake layers.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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