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Dessert

Chocolate Cakes

A sweet cake made with sugar, chocolate, mace, cloves, lemon peel, flour, egg whites, yolks, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Chocolate Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, chocolate, mace, cloves, and lemon peel with the egg yolks and cold water.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Add the flour and knead the mixture until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to add air, giving the cakes a lighter, more open texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture together.
Fine flour
Provides structure once the dough is kneaded and baked.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the cakes as they bake.
Grated chocolate
Adds flavor and deep color to the cakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to a frothy state; folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the cakes rise lightly instead of turning dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, chocolate, clove, lemon, flour, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, clove, lemon, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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