Name: Haple Sugar Cake
Ingredients: 1 egg; 1 cup shaved maple sugar; ⅔ cup sour cream; ⅓ teaspoon baking soda; a pinch of salt; 1½ cups all-purpose flour

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Haple 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.

Prepare the batter

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat the egg and maple sugar together.
Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water, then add the dissolved baking soda to the sour cream.
Stir the sour cream mixture into the egg and sugar mixture.
Gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.
Bake until golden.
Serve warm.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour: Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the cake its structure.
Sour cream: Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda: Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Maple sugar: Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning and its maple aroma.

“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.