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Dessert

Mocha Cake

A cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, coffee, baking powder, and heavy cream, topped with coffee-flavored frosting.

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 ↓

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

  2. In a bowl, cream the egg yolks and sugar together, then add the strong cold coffee to the yolk mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

  4. Sift in the flour and baking powder, and mix until combined.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into Washington pie tins and bake until golden.

  2. Once cooled, split the cakes and fill with whipped heavy cream flavored with strong cold coffee and sweetened to taste.

  3. Frost the top with powdered sugar mixed with cold coffee or use coffee extract.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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
Whipped whites provide lift and an airy, light crumb structure.
Sugar
Creams with the yolks for tenderness and sweetness, and helps the cake brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Heavy cream
Whipped and used as a rich, moist filling between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake its rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“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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