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Dessert

Gateau Mocha and Coffee Cream

A cake made with sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla, rum, butter, icing sugar, coffee, and topped with mocha cream and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gateau Mocha and Coffee Cream

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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and egg yolks.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the yolk mixture.

  4. Add the flour, vanilla extract, and rum, and mix until combined.

  5. Pour the batter into a buttered and papered cake hoop and bake until done.

  6. Once baked, turn the cake upside down on a sieve and let it cool overnight.

  7. Cut the cooled cake into three horizontal slices.

Make the mocha cream

  1. Prepare the coffee essence by boiling the coffee in water for 30 minutes; bottle any leftover for future use.

  2. For the mocha cream, slightly warm the butter and mix in the icing sugar and coffee essence gradually until smooth.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Spread the mocha cream between the cake layers and cover the entire cake with a thin layer of cream.

  2. Smooth the surface with a knife, then brown and chop the almonds.

  3. Press the chopped almonds onto the sides of the cake.

  4. Use a star piping tip to pipe a design on top of the cake with the remaining cream.

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 + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rum + coffeetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together138 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that gives the cake its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the batter for a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mocha cream, giving it a smooth, spreadable texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb and golden browning.
Coffee
Provides the coffee flavour that defines the mocha cream.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture. Overmixing or deflating the whipped whites releases the air that lifts the batter, leaving a dense, flat cake. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

“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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