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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with melted Baker's chocolate, milk, egg yolk, sugar, vanilla, flour, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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.

Make the chocolate custard

  1. Melt the Baker's chocolate.

  2. Mix melted chocolate with ½ cup milk, egg yolk, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

  3. Cook this mixture like boiled custard.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter.

  2. Add ½ cup milk, 2 cups flour, and 1½ teaspoons baking powder to the creamed mixture.

  3. Stir the custard mixture into the cake batter.

  4. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the cake.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the custard and batter together.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise its texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the chocolate custard. The egg yolk can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is cooked too fast. Gentle, steady heat and constant stirring keep it smooth, so it thickens evenly before it goes into the batter.

“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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