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Dessert

One Egg Mocha Cake

A moist chocolate coffee cake made with one egg, butter, sugar, milk, vanilla, cocoa, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

One Egg Mocha Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolk, milk, salt, and vanilla; mix well.

  3. Sift the flour with baking powder and add to the mixture.

  4. Melt the chocolate over steam and mix it in.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white gently.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into two 9‑inch round cake pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Let the cakes cool, then fill and frost with a mixture of confectioner's sugar, butter, vanilla, cocoa, and strong coffee.

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. Vanilla + cocoatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg white
Beaten and folded in, it traps air that helps the cake rise and become light.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's rise and crumb together as it bakes.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and fat, giving the cake a rich, moist crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize its texture when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in both the cake and the frosting.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the beaten egg white intact. Stirring or beating them out would deflate the batter and leave the cake denser and less risen.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, vanilla, flour, chocolate. 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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