Skip to main content
Dessert

Devil Cake

A chocolate cake with butter, brown sugar, sour milk, eggs, baking soda, flour, and whipped egg whites, topped with powdered sugar icing.

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

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 ↓

Devil 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  2. Add the sour milk and beaten egg yolks, mixing well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the melted chocolate and flour until combined.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For icing, mix powdered sugar with sweet cream to desired consistency and spread over the cooled cake.

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

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

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb and richness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses content deepens the flavor and color.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and tenderizes the crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while whipped whites add lift and airiness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, leavening the cake.
Melted chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and dark color that define a devil's food cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding them in gently and last keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake rises well and stays light.

“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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes