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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A moist chocolate cake made with butter, milk, sugar, flour, eggs, baking powder, chocolate, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and add the sugar.

  3. Beat in the eggs and milk.

  4. Mix the baking powder with the flour and gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Dissolve the chocolate in the boiling milk and add it last.

  6. Pour the batter into three shallow round tins.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for about one hour.

  2. Spread with jam, lemon cheese mixture, or chocolate mixture, and stack the cakes.

  3. Ice the top and decorate with glace cherries.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and richness to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Adding the baking powder and flour. Mixing flour gradually into the batter keeps it smooth and evenly combined, and avoiding overmixing helps prevent a tough crumb while the leavening still lifts the cake.

“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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