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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A cake topped with caramel made from butter, sugar, egg whites, milk, flour, corn starch, baking soda, cream of tartar, brown sugar, chocolate, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk, flour, corn starch, baking soda, and cream of tartar until combined.

Make the caramel

  1. In a separate saucepan, combine the brown sugar, chocolate, butter, and milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring, for 5 minutes until smooth. Add vanilla extract to the caramel mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into shallow pans and top with the caramel.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites add structure and lift to the cake crumb as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, butter traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Flour
Flour forms the cake's main structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Baking soda reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Brown sugar gives the caramel topping its molasses flavour, sweetness and moisture.

The step that matters

Cooking the caramel mixture. Stirring over medium heat for the stated time brings the brown sugar, butter and milk together smoothly. Undercooking leaves it grainy or runny, while overcooking can make it hard once it cools.

“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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