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Dessert

Maple Syrup Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, maple syrup, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Maple Syrup Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of three eggs until thick and light in color.

  2. Gradually beat in ⅔ cup sugar until creamy.

  3. Add 1 cup + ¼ cup sugar and 1½ tablespoons maple syrup.

  4. Beat three eggs without separating the whites and yolks.

  5. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  6. Sift together the flour and baking powder two or three times.

  7. Add the sifted flour and baking powder alternately with ⅔ cup water.

Bake

  1. Bake in a large pan until golden brown.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Maple syrup + flourtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Add structure, richness and moisture, and help the batter rise when beaten.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, keeps it moist and helps the crust brown.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and maple flavor, and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water alternately. Adding the flour in portions alternating with the water keeps the batter evenly mixed and limits gluten development, which helps prevent a tough 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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