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Chocolate Layer Cake

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 ↓

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.

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

  2. Mix sugar, butter, ground almonds, and grated chocolate together.

  3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Beat egg whites until foamy and fold into the mixture.

  5. Sift in flour and baking powder, then mix until combined.

  6. Pour the batter into greased jelly cake molds and bake until done.

  7. For the custard, boil the milk.

  8. In a separate bowl, mix sugar, chocolate, and corn starch.

  9. Once the milk is boiling, stir in the sugar mixture.

  10. Remove from heat and stir in the eggs until well combined.

  11. Let the custard cool, then spread it between the cake layers.

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. Almond + corntop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, chocolate, milk, corn):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

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

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