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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A layered chocolate cake with custard filling and white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then stir in the sugar and beat until light.

  3. Add the milk, then the flour and beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  4. Divide the batter into two equal parts and grate 5 sticks of chocolate into one half.

Bake and make the custard

  1. Pour the chocolate batter and plain batter into separate cake pans.

  2. Bake the layers.

  3. For the custard, heat 2 cups of milk with 1 teaspoon of butter until boiling.

  4. In a bowl, mix 2 beaten eggs with 1 cup of sugar and stir into the boiling milk.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in a little milk and stir until thick.

Assemble and frost

  1. Spread custard between the layers, alternating white and dark cakes.

  2. Frost the top and sides of the cake with white icing.

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. Flour + milktop 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
Whipped into the batter to add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise in the oven.
Sweet chocolate
Flavors one half of the batter, making the dark layer.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it holds between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch and stir until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when heated, so the custard must be stirred over heat until it bubbles and thickens. Undercooked custard stays runny and can make the layers slide apart.

“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.

More chocolate cake recipes

Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

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