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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with flour, sugar, sweet milk, egg whites, butter, baking powder, vanilla, and topped with a chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, sweet milk, egg whites, butter, baking powder, and vanilla until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar until it threads.

  2. Stir the hot sugar into the well-beaten egg whites and add grated chocolate.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 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. Flour + buttertop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter and help bind the icing.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor in the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot sugar into the egg whites. The sugar syrup must be hot enough to cook the whites as you pour it in. Pouring too slowly or using cool syrup can leave the icing 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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