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Dessert

Cocoa Sour Milk Cakes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa Sour Milk Cakes

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. Melt the butter and cream it with the sugar.

  2. Add the salt, beaten eggs, and the other ingredients in the order given, dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk.

  3. Pour the batter into muffin tins.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Frost with white frosting.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding, and help the batter hold its rise.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release gas for rising. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before mixing spreads it evenly, so the cake rises uniformly without bitter or soapy patches.

Swap the cocoa

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

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

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