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Dessert

Park Street Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Park Street 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk, then gradually add the flour.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda and cream of tartar in a little milk, then add to the batter.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, boil the white granulated sugar with water until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate until smooth.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, folded in, add lift and a light crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and helps stabilise the batter's structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to aid aeration and add sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold the air that lifts the cake. Stirring them vigorously knocks out air, while gentle folding keeps the batter light and prevents a dense, flat result.

“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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