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Dessert

Devil's Food Cake

A chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, warm water, and melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · 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 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Devil's Food Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Melt the chocolate. Add it to the hot milk with the sugar and cook to a smooth paste. Then add the egg, beaten without separating the white and yolk, and set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat one-half cup of butter and one cup of sugar together.

  2. Add the yolks of two eggs.

  3. Alternately add one-half cup of milk and two and one-fourth cups of flour that has two rounding teaspoonfuls of baking powder and a little salt sifted with it.

  4. Add the well-beaten whites, the cold chocolate mixture, and one tablespoonful of warm water. A little more flour may be needed.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in two layers.

  2. Fill the layers and cover the top with boiled frosting.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness; whites are beaten in for lift and lightness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Chocolate (in the method)
Gives the cake its dark color and chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the well-beaten whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake lift. Folding them in gently with the cold chocolate mixture keeps the air from deflating, so the layers rise evenly and stay light.

“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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