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Dessert

Maple Cake

A layered cake with a sweet cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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, mix brown sugar, sour cream, butter, eggs, and vanilla until smooth.

  3. Sift together flour and baking soda, then gradually add to the mixture.

  4. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until it reaches a soft ball stage, then beat hard while cooling in cold water.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers and on top of 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Brown sugar
Adds moisture and a caramel, molasses-like flavour to the cake crumb.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity helps the baking soda react.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to lift the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the filling while it cools. Sugar syrup cooked to soft ball stage must be beaten as it cools so the sugar forms fine crystals. If it is left to set still, it turns grainy or hardens instead of becoming a smooth, spreadable filling.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, 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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