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Dessert

Chocolate Layer Cake

A chocolate cake with chocolate filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and baking powder until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, dissolve the grated chocolate in a small cup of milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the sugar, a small piece of butter, a little salt, and flavoring to the chocolate mixture.

  3. Once the cake layers are cool, spread the filling between them.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Grated baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beating sugar and butter traps air in the fat, which expands in the oven and gives the cake lift. Under-creaming leads to a dense cake.

“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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