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Dessert

Mocha Torte

A layered cake made with flour, baking powder, powdered sugar, egg yolks, mocha essence, egg whites, heavy cream, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mocha Torte

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. Sift the flour three times and mix in the baking powder.

  2. Whip the powdered sugar with the egg yolks until creamy.

  3. Add the Mocha essence and the stiffly beaten egg whites to the mixture.

  4. Carefully fold in the flour and bake in two layers at 350°F (175°C).

Fill and finish

  1. For the filling, mix the whipped cream with the Mocha essence and powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the filling between the layers and on top of the torte.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the light batter together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lightens and raises the torte.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, tenderising the crumb and helping it set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Heavy whipping cream
Whipped into the filling, adding moisture and a soft, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Carefully fold in the flour. Overmixing after the flour goes in knocks out the air from the whipped egg whites and develops gluten, making the layers dense and tough instead of light.

“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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