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Dessert

Caramel Cake

A baked cake topped with a caramel sauce made from brown sugar, chocolate, milk, butter, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the milk, flour, corn starch, egg whites, and baking powder; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a long pan and bake until golden.

Make the caramel and finish

  1. In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, chocolate, milk, butter, and vanilla.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens to a syrup consistency.

  3. Spread the caramel over the baked cake and return it to the oven to dry.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Brown sugar
Gives the caramel its deep flavor and helps it thicken into a syrup.
Chocolate
Adds richness and deepens the flavor of the caramel topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the caramel to syrup consistency. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and gets hotter. Undercooked caramel stays runny and soaks into the cake, while overcooked caramel turns hard and bitter when it cools.

“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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