Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with sour cream, eggs, flour, chocolate, vanilla, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix 1 ¼ cups sugar with ½ cup sour cream.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of 3 eggs, 1 cup flour, and the beaten egg whites.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  4. Melt ¼ pound unsweetened chocolate, add ½ cup sour cream and 1 teaspoon salt, and mix thoroughly.

  5. Stir into the batter.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in layers.

  2. Fill with white frosting.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 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

Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the cake set and stay moist.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, helping the cake rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Unsweetened chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid, here the sour cream, to release gas for lift. Dissolving it in hot water spreads it evenly so the cake rises uniformly instead of forming dense or pale patches.

“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.

More chocolate cake recipes

Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes