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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder, flour, egg whites, white sugar, and grated sweet chocolate.

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

Chocolate 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.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add flour until the batter is stiff.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly cake pans and bake until done.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add white sugar to sweeten and mix in the grated chocolate.

  3. Spread the icing on each layer while it is still warm.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the cake crumb through fat and emulsifying proteins.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides structure that sets the batter once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and lightens.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the icing its light, airy body.
Grated sweet chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and helps thicken the icing as it cools.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to firm peaks without drying out or deflating. Stiff whites trap air that gives the icing its light texture, and they hold that air only if no trace of fat or yolk is present in the bowl.

“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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