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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, flour, cream, eggs, and chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet cream, egg yolks, and whole egg, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda (or baking powder).

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

  6. Pour the batter into greased jelly cake tins and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, melt the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.

  3. Fold the melted chocolate into the egg white mixture and spread over the cooled cakes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so the leavener reacts well, helping the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff to build a light, airy foam that lightens the icing.

The step that matters

Folding the melted chocolate into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whipped egg whites, which lose the air that keeps the icing light. Gentle folding preserves the foam so the icing stays airy and spreadable.

“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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