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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with corn flour, oats, fat, sugar, syrup, eggs, milk, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, chocolate, vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Oats and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,394 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the fat, sugar, and egg yolk together.

  2. Add the syrup and mix well.

  3. Alternately add the liquid and the sifted dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the flavoring and melted chocolate.

  5. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in a loaf pan for about one hour, starting in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. After 20 minutes, raise the temperature to 400°F (200°C).

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. Oats + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and well-beaten whites add richness and lift to the batter.
Corn flour
Provides the main starch structure that sets the crumb as it bakes.
Fat
Creamed with sugar, it carries tenderness and moisture into the cake.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb stay soft.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the batter rises and lightens.
Chocolate
Adds flavor and deep color to the crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the well-beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring hard would deflate the batter, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.

“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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