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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with butter, milk, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, and chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Cake

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  3. Mix the cream of tartar thoroughly with the flour.

  4. Combine butter, sweet milk, sugar, and the egg yolks in a bowl.

  5. Add the flour mixture and baking soda, then fold in the egg whites.

  6. Pour the batter into round tins or Eclair tins.

  7. For lady's fingers, add more flour and bake on well-buttered tins.

Make the chocolate icing

  1. To make the chocolate icing, melt the chocolate in a new pint tin dish without scorching.

  2. Stir in milk or cream and water, then mix in granulated sugar.

  3. Boil the icing until fine, then spread it over the cold cakes.

Assemble and set

  1. If using Eclair tins, cover with icing when cold.

  2. Stack the cakes, alternating with chocolate icing, and cover the sides.

  3. Set the cake in a warm oven to harden the icing.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while separately beaten whites add lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the icing its chocolate flavour and dark colour.

The step that matters

Boil the icing until fine. Boiling the icing to the right point dissolves the sugar fully and sets its texture; undercooked icing stays runny and overcooked icing turns grainy or hard.

“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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