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Dessert

Mahogany Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, sweet milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, chocolate, and a sugar‑milk filling.

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 ↓

Mahogany 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in ½ cup of sweet milk and add to the mixture.

  5. Cook the chocolate in ½ cup of sweet milk until thick, then let it cool and add to the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook 2 cups of milk with 2 ½ cups of sugar until thick.

  2. Let the filling cool and then add flavoring to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the batter brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cake rise and lighten.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before adding flavoring. Adding flavoring to a filling that is still hot can cause its aroma to dissipate and can make the texture uneven, so letting it cool first helps the filling set and keeps the flavor intact.

“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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