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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg whites, baking soda, cream of tartar, and grated Baker's chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chocolate Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Mix in the milk and flour that has been sifted with the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  3. Beat the egg whites and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add the grated chocolate and mix thoroughly.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  2. When the cake is removed from the pan and still hot, cover the bottom with halved marshmallows, sticky side down.

  3. Coat the entire cake with chocolate water icing.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, giving the cake lightness and a open, airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise the crumb while creaming with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to release gas, aiding rise and stabilising the whites.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to the right stiffness. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring vigorously would deflate it and leave a denser cake.

“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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