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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A baked chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, corn starch, egg yolks, baking powder, chocolate, vanilla, and sweet milk icing.

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 ↓

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. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and corn starch.

  5. Mix the baking powder with the flour, then add to the mixture.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until done.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, grate the chocolate into the sweet milk and dissolve it.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling point.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk and add to the chocolate mixture.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a structure that holds together.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the icing its chocolate flavour and deep colour.
Corn starch
Thickens the icing as it heats, giving it a smooth, spreadable body.

The step that matters

Mix the corn starch with cold milk before adding it. Corn starch clumps if it goes straight into hot liquid. Mixing it first with a little cold milk lets the granules separate, so the icing thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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