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Chocolate Layer Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Chocolate Layer 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.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together 1½ cups sugar and ½ cup butter.

  3. Add the yolks of 2 eggs and 1 egg white.

  4. Stir in 1 cup cold water.

  5. Mix in 2½ cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  6. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and stir well before adding baking powder.

  7. For the filling, boil 1 cup sugar and ½ cup milk with walnut-sized butter and 2 squares of chocolate for 20 minutes.

  8. Once cooked, add the beaten egg white from the cake.

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

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

  2. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, flour, sugar, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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