Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicious Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a custard topping made from butter, milk, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Delicious 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then stir in the sugar.

  3. Add the milk, then mix in the flour and beaten egg whites.

  4. Divide the batter into two equal parts.

  5. Grate half a cake of chocolate into one half of the batter.

Bake and make the custard

  1. Pour the batter into cake pans and bake until done.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add ½ pint of milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in 2 beaten eggs, 1 cup of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch dissolved in a little milk.

  5. Cook until thickened, then 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, helping the cake rise and giving it a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and colour to one half of the batter.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so undercooking leaves it runny and it may not set properly when spread over the cake.

“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.

More chocolate cake recipes

Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

You might also like

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