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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with sugar, shortening, egg or egg whites, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, vanilla, chocolate, and powdered sugar.

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 ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and shortening.

  3. Add the egg (or egg whites) and milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar until combined.

  5. Add vanilla extract to taste.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into shallow baking tins and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For frosting, dissolve the Baker's chocolate and spread it over the cooled cake.

  3. Alternatively, mix 2 tablespoons of milk with powdered sugar to make a stiff frosting, flavor it, and spread it over the 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the batter bind and set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crumb while creaming adds air.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and moistness in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. Baking soda and cream of tartar give a short window of rise, so the cake must bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Underbaking leaves the centre collapsing and gummy, while overbaking dries 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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