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Dessert

Burnt Caramel Cake

A cake made with a caramelized sugar topping and a batter of flour, butter, water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 cups flour, 1¼ cups sugar, ¼ cup butter, 1 cup water, and the yolks of 2 eggs.

  3. Beat the mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the well-beaten whites of 2 eggs, ½ cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Make the caramel and finish

  1. In a hot skillet, melt ⅓ cup sugar until it turns dark brown to make caramel.

  2. Slowly stir the caramel into the batter, mixing rapidly to prevent lumps.

  3. The batter should be a rich brown color.

  4. Bake in layers or a loaf pan until done.

  5. Ice as preferred.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 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. Flour + sugartop 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
Yolks and beaten whites add structure and lift to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that form the cake's structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when caramelized, adds deep bitter-sweet flavor and color.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir the caramel into the batter quickly. Dark caramel is hot and thick, so it can seize into lumps if poured in slowly or stirred gently. Rapid mixing disperses it evenly and keeps the batter smooth and uniformly colored.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

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