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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A cake made with eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, sugar, butter, milk, chocolate, and flour, topped with a caramel filling.

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

Make the cake

  1. Grate the chocolate and place it in a kettle of boiling water until dissolved.

  2. In a bowl, mix together the eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, sugar, butter, milk, dissolved chocolate, and flour.

  3. Divide the batter into two layers and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil the granulated sugar, butter, and milk hard for ten minutes, stirring until it thickens.

  2. Spread the filling on the cake.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg structure and adds a slight acidity to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the batter.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling for ten minutes. Boiling sugar, butter and milk hard lets water evaporate and the sugar and milk proteins caramelize and thicken. Too short a boil leaves a runny filling, while too long can scorch it or make it grainy and hard once cooled.

“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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