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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate icing made from boiled sugar syrup and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

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

  3. Add the flour, grated chocolate, sweet milk with dissolved baking soda, and the separated egg yolks. Mix well.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, boil ½ pint of water with 2 cups of sugar until clear and waxy without stirring.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites and add vanilla. Beat until cool and spread over the cake.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites give the batter lift, while yolks add richness and structure to the crumb.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender, moist texture.
Flour
Its proteins set with heat to form the cake's structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and fat that enrich the crumb.

The step that matters

Boiling the icing syrup without stirring. Sugar syrup stirred while boiling can crystallize and turn grainy. Heating it undisturbed to the right stage gives the smooth, glossy texture the icing needs when beaten into the egg whites.

“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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