Name: Mocha Layer Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 1½ cups sugar; 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder; 1 cup boiling milk; ½ cup butter; 1 cup confectioner's sugar; 2 teaspoons cocoa or grated chocolate; 2 tablespoons strong hot coffee

Why it works: Cocoa and coffee work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Mocha Layer 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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Mix baking powder with flour.
In a bowl, combine half the boiling milk with eggs and sugar, then add half the flour and beat thoroughly.
Add the remaining boiling milk and the rest of the flour, mixing well.
Pour the batter into well-oiled jelly cake tins.
For the filling, cream together the butter and confectioner's sugar.
Stir in cocoa or grated chocolate and hot coffee until smooth.

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.

Cocoa + coffeetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together91 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together643 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the cocoa

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

Almondfits about as well
Cocoathe original
Hazelnutfits about as well
Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, butter, coffee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.