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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with grated chocolate, milk, egg yolk, sugar, vanilla, flour, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Grate the chocolate and mix it with ½ cup of milk, the egg yolk, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes until the chocolate and sugar dissolve.

  3. Let the mixture cool while preparing the cake batter.

Make the batter and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 cup of sugar, ½ cup of milk, 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, and 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

  2. Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the cake batter and mix well.

  3. Bake in layers.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become light.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavour and adds colour and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Boil the chocolate mixture until dissolved. If the chocolate and sugar are not fully dissolved, they can leave grainy specks or uneven flavour in the batter. The mixture should be fully smooth before it is cooled and added to the batter.

“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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