Skip to main content
Baking

Mahogany Cake

A chocolate coffee cake made with butter, sugar, cocoa, coffee, sour milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coffee and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Mahogany 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the cocoa and beat well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add them along with the vanilla.

  4. Mix in the coffee and sour milk.

  5. Sift the flour with the baking soda and add it to the mixture.

  6. Finally, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Coffee + cocoatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Pastry flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites trap air that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb soft and moist.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coffee, butter, flour, egg, milk, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes