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Dessert

Sour Cream Chocolate Layer Cake

A chocolate layer cake made with sour cream, eggs, sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sour Cream Chocolate Layer 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. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until very light.

  2. Melt the chocolate in part of the sour cream over low heat and let cool.

  3. Add the cooled chocolate to the remaining sour cream.

  4. Sift the baking soda into the flour and add it alternately with the sour cream mixture to the yolks and sugar.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in two layers at 350°F (175°C).

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Egg yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites folded in stiffly beaten add lift and airy structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with the yolks, helps trap air for a light texture.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and deep color.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the batter, which makes the cake dense instead of 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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