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Dessert

Ashland Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with melted chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs, sour milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ashland Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in boiling water and let it stand.

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and the chocolate mixture to the bowl.

  4. Stir in the sour milk and flour until combined.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a sheet or loaf pan.

  2. Bake.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps creaming trap air in the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with leavening and tenderises the crumb.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavour and deep colour.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that makes the cake rise. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

“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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