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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A chocolate cake with a caramel filling made from milk, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 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 chocolate filling base

  1. Melt the chocolate with ½ cup of milk, sugar, and egg yolk in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until thickened, then cool.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together ⅔ cup of butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar.

  2. Add 2 eggs and 1¼ cups of milk to the butter mixture and mix well.

  3. Stir in the cooled chocolate mixture.

  4. Combine 3 cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients.

  6. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and mix until smooth.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Boil ½ cup of milk and 1½ cups of sugar for 5 minutes, stirring well.

  3. Remove from heat and flavor with vanilla and lemon.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

Chocolate
Provides rich flavor and color, and the melted mixture adds moisture to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while tenderizing the crumb.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened, then cool. The chocolate custard must be thick and fully cooked, since undercooked egg yolk can stay runny and thin the batter. Cooling it before mixing keeps it from melting the butter and deflating the batter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour, vanilla. 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.

More caramel cake recipes

Chocolate 16Filling 11Potato 9Maple 4 See all 114 →

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