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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A layered cake with caramel filling made from eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the flour, milk, granulated sugar, baking powder, and vanilla extract until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into two or three greased cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  4. Let the cakes cool completely before assembling.

Make the caramel filling

  1. For the filling, combine the brown sugar and milk in a saucepan, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Cook over medium heat until it thickens and drops from a spoon.

  3. Remove from heat, add butter and vanilla, and stir until thick enough to spread.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake and on top.

  2. If desired, sprinkle with chopped English walnuts for garnish.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 give the cake structure as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps dissolve the brown sugar in the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Brown sugar
Gives the filling its caramel flavor and helps it thicken as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the caramel filling until it thickens. Cooking the brown sugar and milk drives off water and concentrates the sugars. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling that will not hold between the layers, while cooking too long can make it grainy or hard once it cools.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, sugar, vanilla, butter):

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

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

More caramel cake recipes

Chocolate 16Filling 11Potato 9Maple 4 See all 114 →

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