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Dessert

Gold Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate filling made from grated chocolate, butter, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Gold Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake batter

  1. Beat the yolks of five eggs for twenty minutes.

  2. Add ½ cup of creamed butter and 1 cup of sugar, mixing well.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of sweet milk.

  4. Gradually add 2 cups of sifted flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, mixing until smooth.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 4 heaping tablespoons of grated chocolate, an egg-sized piece of butter, 3 cups of sugar, and 1 cup of sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a 'soft ball' in water.

  3. Remove from heat, beat until thick, and add flavoring as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, giving the cake structure and a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake and the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give the filling its smooth, thick body.
Grated chocolate
Provides chocolate flavor and color to the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the filling to soft ball stage. Sugar concentration determines how the filling sets. Boiling too little leaves it runny, while boiling too long makes it hard and grainy once cooled.

“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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