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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with two frosts: butter‑sugar milk frosting and chocolate sugar water frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

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

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

  3. Add the melted chocolate and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the beaten egg whites and milk.

  5. Gradually add the milk mixture to the chocolate mixture.

  6. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then fold into the batter.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30‑35 minutes.

Make and spread the frostings

  1. For the first frosting, combine melted butter, sugar, milk, and cream of tartar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 13 minutes, then flavor with vanilla and beat until thick enough to spread.

  3. For the second frosting, melt the chocolate with sugar and boiling water until smooth.

  4. Spread the first frosting on the cooled cake, then top with the second frosting.

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. Chocolate + creamtop 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 trap air, giving the cake a light, fluffy crumb and tender texture.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift as they set in the oven, helping the cake rise and hold its shape.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once mixed with liquid and heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become airy.
Chocolate
Provides the cake's chocolate flavor and adds richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil the first frosting for exactly 13 minutes. Boiling sugar and milk to the right point controls how much water evaporates and how the sugar crystallizes. Too short and the frosting stays runny; too long and it becomes grainy or hard before it can be spread.

“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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