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Dessert

Cocoa Cake

A simple cocoa cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoa Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder together.

Make the cocoa paste

  1. Dissolve the cocoa in water.

  2. Boil the mixture to form a paste.

Bake

  1. Combine the cocoa paste with the cake mixture.

  2. Pour the batter into cake pans.

  3. Bake until done.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Cocoa
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and deep color.

The step that matters

Boil the cocoa paste. Cooking the cocoa in water until thick helps it dissolve fully and gives a smoother batter with deeper chocolate flavor. Undercooked cocoa can leave a raw, gritty taste and uneven texture.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, 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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