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Dessert

Chocolate Layer Cake

A chocolate layer cake made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, grated chocolate, sour cream, baking soda, flour, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Layer 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Melt the grated chocolate and add it to the mixture.

  4. Combine the sour cream and baking soda, then add the sour cream mixture to the batter.

  5. Gradually add the flour and mix until just combined.

Add the egg whites and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.

  3. Divide the batter into four layers.

  4. Bake the layers in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

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

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

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

  3. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for a light texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the batter into a smooth emulsion.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which keeps the crumb tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and airiness to the batter.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Overmixing knocks out the air whipped into the egg whites, so the layers rise less and turn dense. Fold gently with a spatula until no white streaks remain.

“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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