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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate filling.

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

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 together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and baking powder.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the milk, sugar, chocolate, and cornstarch for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and egg yolks.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  4. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites are beaten and folded in to lighten the batter; yolks add richness and help set the filling.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add tenderness and fat to the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it boils, giving it a smooth, set texture.
Chocolate
Gives the filling its chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring them vigorously deflates that foam, so fold gently and keep the batter airy.

“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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