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Dessert

Chocolate Cake, No. 2

A chocolate layer cake with white frosting made from sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg whites, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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, No. 2

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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Fold in the egg whites gently.

Bake and make the frosting

  1. Pour the batter into layer cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the frosting, boil the yolks of 2 eggs with ½ cup milk and 1½ cups sugar until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the dissolved or grated chocolate.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and frost the top with white frosting.

  2. Decorate with chocolate designs using a pastry bag.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to create a tender, fine crumb through trapped air.
Egg whites
Folded in to add lift and structure to the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas and help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda and helps stabilise the whites.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the frosting.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous mixing deflates the batter and produces a dense, flat cake.

“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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