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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A simple chocolate cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, cocoa, vanilla, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs gradually, alternating with the flour and cocoa essence.

  3. Stir in the vanilla extract and baking powder.

  4. Beat the mixture well and pour it into two cake tins.

Finish

  1. You may ice the cakes if desired.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, binding the batter as they are beaten in.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamy base when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Cocoa essence
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding eggs slowly to the creamed butter and sugar keeps the emulsion stable. If they go in too quickly the batter can curdle, which may lead to a heavier, coarser cake.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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