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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made by boiling milk, egg yolk, and chocolate, then adding sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and assembling with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Boil together ½ cup milk, 1 egg yolk, and ¼ cake of chocolate until thickened.

  2. Cool the mixture, then add 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, and ½ cup milk.

Finish and assemble

  1. Thicken with 2 cups flour sifted with baking powder.

  2. Flavor with vanilla, make into layers, and assemble with boiled icing.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it thickens.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the chocolate mixture as it thickens.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter so the cake rises.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a tender, browned crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer texture and richer flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the chocolate mixture until thickened. Cooking the milk, egg yolk and chocolate together thickens them by heat, so the mixture must be stopped at the right point. Overcooking can cause the egg yolk to scramble and turn grainy.

“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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