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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate filling made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 milk and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking powder.

  5. Fold in the whites of 4 eggs.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until done, like a jelly cake.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat the whites of 3 eggs to stiff peaks with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Mix in the grated chocolate and 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the warm cake layers and on top and sides, allowing it to dry on the stove.

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. Milk + flourtop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Whites are whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and add structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, making the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add fat, tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks for the filling. Egg whites only hold air when fully whipped and free of fat or yolk. Under-beaten or greasy whites will not stand up, so the filling will be runny and will not set properly when the chocolate is folded in.

“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 →

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