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Dessert

A Good Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with melted chocolate, sugar, milk, eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

A Good Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Combine the chocolate, 1 scant cup of sugar, and ½ cup of milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of melted butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Beat in 2 eggs separately, adding the egg white from the dark mixture.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of sweet milk and 2 cups of sifted flour with 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

  4. Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the batter and mix well.

  5. If the batter is too thick, add enough milk to achieve the proper consistency.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in layers and frost with white icing.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cake structure and a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and deep color.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Cooling the chocolate mixture before adding it to the batter. If the hot chocolate mixture goes into the creamed butter and eggs, it can melt the fat and loosen the batter, so the cake may bake up dense or greasy. Letting it cool first keeps the batter stable.

“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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