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Dessert

Sour Cream Nut Cake

A moist walnut cake made with sour cream, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla 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 ↓

Sour Cream Nut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a large cup and fill it with sour cream.

  2. Combine the eggs, sour cream, baking soda, and sugar in a mixing bowl.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

  4. Add enough flour to make a stiff batter and flavor with vanilla.

  5. Chop the walnuts, reserving some for the top.

  6. Stir the chopped walnuts into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Ice the top.

  3. Place the reserved walnut halves 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. Sugar + vanillatop 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. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure to the cake crumb.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acid to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that sets the cake.
English walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Make the batter stiff with flour. Flour must be added until the batter is stiff but still mixed evenly. Too little flour leaves a loose batter that may sink or bake gummy, while overmixing after adding flour can toughen the crumb by overdeveloping gluten.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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