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Dessert

Delicious Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with a custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Delicious 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Stir in the sugar and beat until light.

  4. Add the milk.

  5. Gradually mix in the flour and beaten egg whites.

  6. Divide the batter in half.

  7. Grate the sweet chocolate into one half.

Bake the cakes

  1. Pour the batters into prepared cake pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the custard

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk with 1 tablespoon of butter until boiling.

  2. Beat 2 eggs with 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Stir into the boiling milk.

  4. Dissolve 2 teaspoons of corn starch in a little milk.

  5. Add to the mixture, stirring until thickened.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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

Egg whites
Whipped into the batter to give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the cake.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises during baking.
Sweet chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and color to one half of the batter.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats so it becomes smooth and set.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Egg and starch mixtures can scorch on the bottom or curdle if heated unevenly. Constant stirring spreads heat and lets the starch thicken smoothly before the eggs overcook.

“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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