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Dessert

New Orleans Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake from New Orleans made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, lemon extract, and Baker's chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

New Orleans Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and one cup of flour alternately.

  3. Sift the baking powder and grated chocolate with the remaining cup of flour two or three times.

  4. Add the egg whites last.

  5. Mix well.

  6. Pour into buttered tins.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Frost with cooked icing.

  3. Add grated chocolate on top.

  4. Keep the sides as white as possible.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whites add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavour and deep colour.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites last. Folding in beaten egg whites gently keeps the air bubbles they hold intact. Overmixing deflates them, which leads to a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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