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Dessert

Devils Food Cake

A chocolate cake with a sweet cocoa filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Devils Food 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs, buttermilk, hot water, and dissolved cocoa powder; mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking soda, mixing until smooth.

Bake the cake

  1. Pour the batter into greased cake pans and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, combine sugar, sweet milk, cocoa powder, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thick, then stir in vanilla extract.

  3. Once the cake is cool, spread the filling between the layers.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + cocoa powdertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together249 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk or sour milk to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Buttermilk or sour milk
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Cocoa powder
Provides chocolate flavor and dark color to the cake and filling.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Sugar and milk must be cooked long enough to thicken into a spreadable filling. Undercooked filling stays runny and soaks into the cake, while overcooking can make it grainy or stiff once it cools.

“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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