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Dessert

Burnt Sugar Cake

A cake made with burnt sugar, butter, eggs, flour, and vanilla, topped with burnt sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Burnt 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.

Make the burnt sugar

  1. Combine 1 cup granulated sugar and 1 cup cold water in a saucepan. Boil without stirring until it turns dark brown and smokes.

  2. Thin the burnt sugar with a scant ½ cup boiling water and let it cool before using.

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream together 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter.

  2. Add the yolks of 2 eggs, 1 cup cold water, and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract. Mix well.

  3. Sift together 2 cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder, then add to the mixture. Beat for 5 minutes.

  4. Fold in the beaten whites of 2 eggs and 4 teaspoons burnt sugar.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For icing, add 3 tablespoons burnt sugar to your regular boiled icing.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Whites trapped by folding add lift and a light crumb; yolks add richness and structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake tenderness and richness.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Burnt sugar
Adds deep caramel flavour and dark colour to the cake and icing.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar until it smokes. Sugar darkens and changes flavour quickly near the end of caramelisation, so it can turn bitter if it goes too far. Stopping at dark brown with a slight smoke gives deep flavour without burnt bitterness. Boiling without stirring helps it colour evenly.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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