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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate filling.

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 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar, sweet milk, and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Sift the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture last.

  5. In a double boiler, combine the chocolate, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup sweet milk, and the yolk of 1 egg. Cook until thickened, then cool and stir into the cake batter.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil together ½ cup sugar and ½ cup water until it candies.

  2. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg whites. Let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and deep color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites to the hot sugar syrup. The syrup must be hot enough to partly cook the egg whites and set the foam. Adding the whites off heat and letting the mixture cool keeps the filling light and stable instead of runny or 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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