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Dessert

Delicious Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake layered with custard, made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, and chocolate.

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 ↓

Delicious 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 batter

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Stir in the sugar and beat until light.

  4. Add the milk.

  5. Add the flour.

  6. Add the beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  7. Divide the batter into two equal parts.

  8. Grate half a cake of sweet chocolate into one part.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the chocolate batter into one layer.

  2. Pour the plain batter into another layer.

  3. Bake the layers until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk with 1 tablespoon of butter until boiling.

  2. Beat 2 eggs with 1 cup of sugar.

  3. Stir in 2 teaspoons of corn starch dissolved in a little milk.

  4. Slowly add the egg mixture to the boiling milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  5. Spread custard between the layers, alternating the white and dark cakes.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Egg whites add lift and structure to the cake, while whole eggs thicken the custard.
Butter
Creams with sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sweet chocolate
Gives the dark layer its chocolate flavour and colour.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiling milk. Pouring the eggs in too fast or without constant stirring can scramble them. Stirring steadily while adding them gently cooks the eggs and lets the starch thicken the custard evenly.

“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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