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Dessert

Sour Cream Cake

A layered cake made with sour cream, flour, sugar, and spices, baked in jelly pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Sour Cream Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sour Cream 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, sour cream, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in water and add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg and nutmeg.

  5. Divide the batter; pour two-thirds into two greased jelly pans.

Make the second layer

  1. For the remaining batter, add sour cream, molasses, baking soda, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and raisins.

  2. Pour this mixture into a greased pan.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake all layers until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the cakes together with boiled frosting.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, richness and acidity that keeps the crumb tender.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Adds additional lift so the layers rise evenly in the oven.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in water before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed into the batter so it reacts uniformly with the acidic sour cream. Unevenly distributed soda can leave bitter pockets or patchy rising.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, flour, egg, nutmeg, molasses, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicethe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, flour, egg, nutmeg, molasses, cinnamon. 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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