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Dessert

Devil's Food Cake with Walnut Filling

A chocolate cake with a walnut filling and chocolate frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Devil's Food Cake with Walnut Filling

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 2 cups of powdered sugar until light.

  2. Cook ½ pound of grated chocolate with 1 cup of milk in a double boiler for 10 minutes.

  3. Cool the chocolate mixture and stir it into the egg mixture.

  4. Add 1 cup of sifted flour mixed with 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of vanilla to the batter.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites of the 4 eggs.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake the batter in layer cake pans.

  2. Beat 1 egg for the walnut filling and add 1 cup of milk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1 cup of chopped walnuts.

  3. Cook the walnut filling in a double boiler until thick.

  4. Cool the filling and spread it between the cake layers.

Finish

  1. Cover the top of the cake with chocolate 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and whites, beaten stiff and folded in, lighten the batter and give it structure.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its deep chocolate flavour and dark colour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Deflating the batter by stirring hard makes the cake dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, chocolate, milk, flour, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate, milk, flour, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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