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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A dense cake made with caramelized sugar, eggs, sour cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Caramel Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter base

  1. Add baking soda to the sour cream.

  2. Mix baking powder with the flour.

  3. In a bowl, combine whole eggs, sour cream, baking soda, melted butter, and half of the flour mixture. Beat for 10 minutes.

Make the sugar syrup and egg whites

  1. In a saucepan, melt the sugar over low heat, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. Once dark brown, add 1 cup of water and boil until it threads.

  2. Add a pinch of salt to the egg whites and beat until stiff.

  3. Pour the melted sugar over the beaten egg whites and beat slowly until cold.

Finish the batter and bake

  1. Add half of the sugar mixture to the batter and beat slowly for 15 minutes.

  2. Incorporate the remaining flour mixture and beat for another 10 minutes.

  3. Gently fold in the rest of the melted sugar.

  4. Bake in a loaf or layer pan.

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

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

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cake its structure.
Egg whites
Beaten into foam, they trap air that lifts the cake's crumb.
Whole eggs
Add richness and help bind the batter and set the structure.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking powder
A leavening agent that releases gas to make the cake rise.
Granulated sugar
Caramelized into the batter, it adds deep flavor, color and sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the melted sugar over the beaten egg whites and beat slowly until cold.. The syrup must be cooled and added to the foam gently. Hot or rapidly mixed sugar can deflate the egg white foam, and the air it holds is what lifts the cake.

“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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