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Dessert

Lizzie Haeeis' Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate glaze, made from chocolate, milk, sugar, eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Lizzie Haeeis' Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Break the chocolate into pieces and stir it into ½ cup of milk.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar and the yolk of 1 egg.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until smooth.

  4. Let the chocolate mixture cool.

Make and bake the cake

  1. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of butter.

  2. Add ½ cup of milk, 3 eggs, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 2 cups of flour, then mix the batter well.

  3. Incorporate the cooled chocolate mixture into the batter.

  4. Flavor the batter with 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  5. Divide the batter into 4 thin layers.

  6. Bake the layers.

Make the frosting

  1. Cook 2 cups of sugar and 8 tablespoons of boiling water until it forms a string.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat continuously until cool.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the layers rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and deep color.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Cook the sugar and water to a string stage. Sugar syrup that is cooked too little stays runny, while cooked too far it turns grainy or hard. Pouring it hot over the whites is what cooks and stiffens them into frosting.

“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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