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Dessert

Loaf Chocolate Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Loaf Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Boil ½ cup sugar, ½ cup milk, and 1 square chocolate until thick; let cool.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup sugar.

  2. Add 3 beaten eggs and ½ cup milk to the butter mixture.

  3. Sift 1 teaspoon baking powder with 2 cups flour and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and the cooled chocolate mixture last.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavour and deep colour.

The step that matters

Stir in the cooled chocolate mixture last. The chocolate mixture should be cooled so it does not melt the butter or cause the batter to curdle, and adding it last with gentle mixing keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing, which would toughen the crumb.

“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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