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Dessert

Chocolate Sandwich Cake

A chocolate cake with layers separated by chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Sandwich 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Separate the egg whites and yolks.

  3. Beat the yolks with the sugar until combined.

  4. Melt the butter and stir it in alternately with the flour, ground rice, and baking powder.

  5. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites and milk.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow round tin and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, cut the cake in half and spread chocolate icing between the layers.

  3. Join the layers together and ice the top of the 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Whites trapped by folding add lift and a light, airy structure to the sponge.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavour.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the sponge together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become lighter.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when beaten with yolks, helps add air to the batter.
Ground rice
Gives the cake a slightly finer, more tender crumb than flour alone.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the whisked egg whites. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air in the whisked whites. Those air bubbles are what lift the sponge, so overmixing will leave the cake dense.

“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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