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Dessert

Chocolate Cake for Holidays

A chocolate cake made with powdered sugar, grated chocolate, almonds, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake for Holidays

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix powdered sugar, grated chocolate, and chopped almonds.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a buttered baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes.

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. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk to the batter.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and some body to the mixture.
Chopped almonds
Add texture and nutty flavour to the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the batter structure and lift.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff egg whites trap air that gives lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam and produces a denser result.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, egg. 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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