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Dessert

Burnt Sugar Cake

A cake made with burnt sugar syrup and butter, eggs, flour, vanilla, baking powder, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Burnt Sugar 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 burnt sugar

  1. In a pan over medium heat, melt ½ cup sugar until it smokes and turns brown.

  2. Carefully add ½ cup boiling water and cook until it forms a syrup.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together 1 cup butter, 1½ cups sugar, 2 egg yolks, and 1 cup water until smooth.

  2. Mix in the burnt sugar syrup to taste, 1 teaspoon vanilla, ½ cup flour, and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake and ice

  1. Divide the batter into two greased cake pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Use the remaining burnt sugar as icing for the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that helps the cake rise and become light.
Egg yolks
Add fat and emulsifying power, helping the batter stay smooth and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as the batter bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when melted to brown, adds a deep caramel flavour.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar to a dark brown. Sugar moves from amber to bitter and burnt within seconds. Stop when it is dark brown, since over-darkened sugar tastes acrid. Add the water carefully, because the hot syrup spatters violently.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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