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Dessert

Mississippi Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with butter, eggs, sour cream, flour, baking soda, chocolate, nut meat, egg whites, sugar, and marshmallows.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mississippi Chocolate 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 cake

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

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

  4. Mix in the sour cream and baking soda until foamy.

  5. Gradually add the flour and mix well.

  6. Melt the chocolate and fold it into the batter.

  7. Stir in the floured nut meat.

  8. Pour the batter into square tins and bake until done.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and mix until smooth.

  3. Fold in the marshmallows and spread over the cooled cake.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and richness as they set in the oven.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Bitter chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor and color to the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks, and sugar added too early or too quickly can deflate the foam, leaving a dense, weepy icing.

“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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