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Dessert

Delicious Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a custard filling made from butter, milk, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Delicious 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat butter until creamy.

  3. Add sugar and beat until light.

  4. Mix in milk.

  5. Gradually add flour and beaten egg whites.

  6. Grate half a cake of sweet chocolate into batter. Mix well.

  7. Divide batter into two equal parts.

Bake and make the custard

  1. Bake in layers.

  2. Heat 1 tablespoon butter with 1 pint milk until boiling.

  3. Mix 2 beaten eggs, 1 cup sugar, and 2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved in a little milk.

  4. Add egg mixture to boiling milk. Stir until thickened.

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. Butter + milktop 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped into the batter to add structure and lift as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes airy.
Sweet chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the batter.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook in the hot milk, giving it body.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Egg mixture added to boiling milk can scramble if heat is too high or stirring stops. Constant stirring lets the cornstarch and egg thicken the custard evenly and smoothly.

“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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