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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate loaf made with milk, egg yolk, chocolate, sugar, butter, baking soda, flour, vanilla, and frosted with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cook the milk, egg yolk, and chocolate together like a custard.

  2. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  3. Add the custard to the creamed mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in ½ cup of milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the flour and vanilla until well combined.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Use the egg white to make frosting once the cake is baked.

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
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the custard, giving the crumb tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to produce gas that lifts and aerates the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and a tender texture.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and some fat that deepens the cake's color.

The step that matters

Cook the milk, egg yolk, and chocolate as a custard. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but too much heat can scramble it into lumps. Stirring steadily over low heat keeps the custard smooth so it blends evenly into the batter.

“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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