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Dessert

Chocolate Layer Cake

A chocolate cake made by layering batter and assembling with vanilla icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Layer 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 batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and the warm water with dissolved chocolate.

  4. Mix in the flour and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

  5. Stir in the sour milk with the remaining 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in it.

  6. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites of 2 eggs.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in layers.

  2. Assemble with vanilla icing.

  3. Decorate as 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. 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
Yolks add richness and bind the batter; whipped whites trap air that helps the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Sugar
Creaming with butter adds sweetness and helps create a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the whites. Stirring hard knocks that air out, so the layers rise less and turn out denser.

“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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