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Dessert

Chocolate Nut Cake

A layered chocolate cake with walnut and coconut icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chocolate Nut Cake

Why it works: Walnut and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 606 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Chocolate Nut 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 layers

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  6. Divide the batter into three layers.

  7. Bake until golden.

Make the icing and filling

  1. Dissolve 1 cup of sugar in enough water to cover it.

  2. Cook the sugar until it threads.

  3. Beat the hot sugar into the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  4. Stir in the cooled melted chocolate.

  5. Reserve some icing for the top of the cake.

  6. Chop the walnuts and coconut and mix them into the remaining icing.

Assemble

  1. Spread the nut icing between each layer and on top of the cake.

  2. Finish with the reserved plain 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Walnut + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites beaten to stiff peaks give the batter lift and an airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, cooked to threads, sets the glossy icing.
Melted chocolate
Adds rich flavor and a deep color to the icing and filling.

The step that matters

Cook the sugar until it threads. Sugar syrup that is undercooked stays runny and will not stiffen the egg whites, while overcooked syrup turns hard and grainy. Hot syrup must be poured in a thin stream while beating so the whites set into a stable icing.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, butter, egg, chocolate, coconut. 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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