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Dessert

Mocha Cake

Mocha cake is a baked dessert with a chocolate coffee frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix melted butter, egg whites, milk, sugar, baking powder, flour, salt, and vanilla until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a square tin and bake for 20 minutes.

Frost and finish

  1. Once baked, turn the cake out onto a board and cut it into small squares.

  2. For the frosting, mix melted butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, and flavor with vanilla and strong coffee.

  3. Frost the squares and roll them in finely chopped walnut meats.

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. Cocoa + coffeetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + cocoatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

Egg whites
Provide structure and lift as the batter sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cake and frosting.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Cocoa
Gives the frosting its chocolate flavor and color.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

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

“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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