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Dessert

Fudge Cake

A dense chocolate cake with nuts, made by creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs, flour, melted chocolate, nuts, and vanilla, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fudge Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat each egg separately, adding a pinch of salt to each.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.

  5. Add the flour, melted chocolate, nuts, and vanilla to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a pan lined with greased brown paper for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Butter + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that coats the flour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Unsweetened chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and deep color that define the fudge cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them all at once can cause the mixture to curdle and trap air unevenly, which affects the cake's texture.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, chocolate):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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