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Dessert

Mocha Cream Cake

A layered cake with coffee-flavored filling and icing, made from sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Mocha Cream Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the sweet milk, then mix in the flour and baking powder.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Bake in two or three layers at 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, heat the coffee and milk in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the flour, sugar, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Cook until thick like custard, then add the butter.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, mix the powdered sugar, egg white, and coffee.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Beaten egg whites add lift and a light, airy crumb to the cake.
Egg yolks
Cooked into the filling, they thicken it and give a custard-like richness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in both the cake and the filling.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure and thickens the filling as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Coffee
Gives the mocha flavour to the filling and icing.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Egg yolks and flour must be cooked gently over a double boiler until thickened. Overheating can curdle the yolks, while undercooking leaves the filling runny and floury.

“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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