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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made by boiling chocolate in milk, adding egg yolks, sugar, flour, baking powder, and butter, then icing with boiled milk and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake batter

  1. Boil the chocolate in the milk for a few minutes, then stir.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir until thick.

  3. Mix in the sugar and the remaining ½ cup of milk along with the other ingredients.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake as a layer cake with icing between layers or as one large cake with icing on top.

  2. For the icing, boil 3 tablespoons of milk and ½ cup of granulated sugar together for a few minutes until it strings from the spoon.

  3. Remove from heat, flavor with vanilla, and stir until cool before applying to the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the cake.
Egg yolks
Thicken the batter when stirred and add richness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Stirring the icing until cool before applying it. Icing spread while still hot runs off the cake and soaks in unevenly. Letting it cool and thicken lets it stay on the surface and set into a smooth coating.

“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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