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Dessert

Black Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a coconut filling made from powdered sugar, water, egg whites, and grated chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Black Chocolate Cake

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 ↓

Black 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 beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and grated chocolate.

  5. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda.

  6. Gradually add the flour until well combined.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix the powdered sugar with cold water until smooth.

  2. Beat the remaining egg whites until soft peaks form, then fold in the grated chocolate.

  3. Boil the mixture until very thick, then add the grated coconut.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of the cooled cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lightness and structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until very thick. Sugar dissolved in water thickens as water evaporates and the syrup concentrates. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling that will soak into the cake layers, while overcooking can make it stiff and grainy as it cools.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, chocolate, milk, 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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