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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with coconut filling and topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  6. Divide the batter evenly among 4 round cake tins.

  7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, melt the chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 cup milk, and 1 egg.

  3. Cook until thick, then let it cool slightly and stir in coconut.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers, frost the top, and sprinkle with coconut.

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. 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and a fine, light crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped structure that lifts the batter and sets the crumb as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Egg
Thickens the chocolate filling as it cooks, giving it body.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Egg and flour thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle the egg. Cook gently and stir constantly so the filling sets smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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

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