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Dessert

Warm Cream Cake

A warm cake made with sour cream, butter, eggs, baking soda, ginger, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Warm 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

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

  2. In a mixing bowl, cream together the sour cream and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs, baking soda, and ground ginger, and mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter reaches a consistency similar to ordinary cake batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot with butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the cake tender and rich.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb when creamed smooth.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of sour cream to lift and lighten the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour is added gradually until the batter reaches the stated consistency. Too much flour makes the cake dense and dry, since gluten develops and starch absorbs liquid, so stop when the batter matches ordinary cake batter.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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