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Dessert

Chocolate Fudge Cake

A chocolate cake with a fudge frosting, made from eggs, shortening, sugar, chocolate, milk, vanilla, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Chocolate Fudge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift flour once, measure, then sift with baking powder, baking soda, and salt three times.

  3. Cream shortening thoroughly, add sugar gradually, and cream until light and fluffy.

  4. Add egg yolks and melted chocolate, then alternately add flour and milk, a small amount at a time, beating until smooth after each addition.

  5. Stir in vanilla and fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour batter into two greased 9-inch layer pans and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes and cover the top and sides with fudge frosting.

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

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

  4. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, with the whites, add structure and lift as the cake sets.
Shortening
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with shortening to aerate the batter and add sweetness and browning.
Unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or overmixing deflates it and leaves a dense cake.

“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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