Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with walnut layers and chocolate frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and flour, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the grated chocolate and chopped walnuts.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, melt the grated chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar and milk, then boil for five minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped walnuts and mix until it begins to thicken.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that works with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.
Grated chocolate
Contributes rich chocolate flavor and some fat to the batter and frosting.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while tenderizing the crumb.

The step that matters

Boiling the frosting and judging when it thickens. Boiling concentrates the sugar, and as the mixture cools it sets firmer. Boiling too long or stirring too late can make the frosting stiff or grainy, while stopping too early leaves it runny.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, cream, butter, flour, chocolate. 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.

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