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Dessert

Chocolate Desert

A chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Desert

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 butter.

  3. Add the milk and eggs, mixing well.

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

  5. Mix in the melted chocolate until well combined.

  6. Pour the batter into an angel cake pan.

  7. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. For the frosting, combine the scraped chocolate, powdered sugar, and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over low heat until it thickens slightly.

  3. Frost the cake while it is still hot and fill the center with whipped cream.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add fat and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the batter and works with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Baker's chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and deep color to the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the frosting over low heat. Gentle heat lets the chocolate and powdered sugar melt and thicken smoothly. High heat can scorch chocolate or cause it to seize and turn grainy.

“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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