Skip to main content
Dessert

Cocoa Cake

A moist cocoa cake made with butter, flour, eggs, and cocoa, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil cocoa in 1 tablespoon of milk and set aside.

  2. Cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add flour, eggs, baking powder, and milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites to stiff peaks, adding sugar and cornstarch to stiffen.

  5. Fold in the cocoa mixture and combine all ingredients gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, cover each layer with a thin layer of frosting and sprinkle with dry cocoa.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and richness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and help the cake rise.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the cocoa mixture and egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate the batter, leading to a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the cocoa

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

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

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

You might also like

Coconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipesCocoa Nut PuddingCocoa Nut Pudding9 recipes