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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A layered chocolate cake with almonds, spices, and lemon peel, baked with butter, sugar, eggs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, and egg yolks.

  2. In another bowl, mix the chocolate, almonds, spices, lemon peel, flour, and baking powder.

  3. Combine the contents of both bowls.

  4. Add the wine and the beaten egg whites.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in layers.

  2. Layer with jelly or whipped cream between the cake layers.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites add air that lifts the cake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Grated chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and a rich, dense crumb.
Pounded almonds
Add body and moisture, giving a tender, slightly dense texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the layers lift. Stirring them in too vigorously deflates that foam, so the cake bakes flatter and denser.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, egg, clove, chocolate, allspice. 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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