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Dessert

Chocolate Caramel Cake

A chocolate cake with caramel flavor, made with chocolate, milk, butter, flour, sugar, baking soda, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramel 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 batter

  1. Combine chocolate, ½ cup milk, and egg yolk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until melted and smooth.

  3. Add butter while mixture still warm and stir until melted.

  4. Once cool, mix in additional ½ cup milk, flour, sugar, baking soda, and vanilla until well combined.

  5. The batter should be slightly thicker than molasses.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide batter into two greased cake pans and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes and frost with white icing.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 together as it bakes.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter into a smooth, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to lift and lighten the cake as it bakes.
Unsweetened chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the butter while the chocolate mixture is still warm. If the mixture cools too much, the butter can seize or stay in lumps instead of blending smoothly, leaving the batter uneven. Stirring until fully melted keeps the emulsion smooth.

“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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