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Dessert

Maple Sugar Cake

A cake made with butter, sweet milk, flour, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda, egg whites, vanilla, maple sugar syrup filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sweet milk.

  3. Add the flour, granulated sugar, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light and fluffy, then fold into the batter.

  5. Add vanilla to taste and mix gently.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil the sugar and water together until it clears from the spoon.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites, mixing continuously.

  3. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they lighten the batter and help the cake rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes the beaten egg whites.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Maple sugar
Adds sweetness and a distinctive maple aroma to the cake and filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled until it clears from the spoon so it reaches the right sugar concentration. Pouring it slowly while mixing continuously lets the hot syrup cook and stabilize the whites into a smooth, glossy filling rather than scrambled or deflated foam.

“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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