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Dessert

Maple Cake

A cake with maple syrup batter and maple frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Maple 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  4. Add the sweet milk and baking powder to the butter mixture.

  5. Gradually add flour until the batter reaches a smooth consistency.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make and spread the maple frosting

  1. In a saucepan, boil the maple syrup and sugar until it becomes brittle.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup into the beaten egg whites and beat until stiff.

  3. Spread the maple frosting over the cooled 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the cake and frosting a light structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives the cake a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Flour
Its proteins form the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Maple syrup
Supplies the maple flavour and sweetness of the frosting.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when boiled, forms the brittle base of the frosting.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup into the beaten egg whites. The hot syrup partly cooks the egg white proteins as you beat, setting a stable foam. Pour it in a thin, steady stream while beating so it does not scramble the whites or deflate them.

“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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