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Dessert

Candy Cake

A chocolate and nut cake baked in a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Candy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and melted chocolate, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the chopped nuts and flour until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan, spreading it to about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. While hot, cut into squares.

  4. Serve with tea.

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. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its main flavour and adds richness.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a crunchy contrast to the soft crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

While hot, cut into squares.. The cake is soft and fragile while hot and firms as it cools, so cutting too early can crumble the squares. Letting it cool enough to hold its shape gives clean edges.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, chocolate, flour. 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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