Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Filling

A sweet caramel mixture made from sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla, used as a cake filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Caramel Filling

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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine 3½ cups of sugar and the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the remaining cup of sugar with the butter, stirring constantly until it turns brown.

  3. Add the browned mixture to the double boiler and mix thoroughly.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the upper part of the double boiler on the stove and boil rapidly until it thickens.

  2. Remove from heat, add vanilla, and beat for a few minutes.

  3. Spread the caramel filling on 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar
Caramelises to give the filling its brown colour and deep, sweet flavour.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that thickens into a creamy filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and smooth texture in the caramel.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar in the frying pan. Sugar can go from amber to burnt quickly. Stirring constantly and stopping at brown keeps the flavour rich and bitter-free, which affects the whole filling.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes