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Baking

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with egg whites, egg yolks, butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, and chocolate.

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 ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add a little flour to bind the mixture.

  4. Alternately add the milk and remaining flour.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites and finally the baking powder.

  6. Pour the batter into three large cake pans.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the egg yolks, sugar, milk, and chocolate in a double boiler.

  2. Simmer until smooth.

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 whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, forming the cake's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind and thicken the chocolate filling.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and body in the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, and the cake loses the lift the whites provide.

“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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