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Dessert

Sandwich Cake

A sweet cake with cocoa icing, made from sugar, eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, cocoa, water, icing sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sandwich 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Lightly fold in the flour and baking powder.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 25-30 minutes.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, stir the cocoa and cold water in a saucepan over low heat until it boils for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add the icing sugar and vanilla essence, mixing until smooth.

  3. Pour the icing over the cooled sandwich 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  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. Flour + cocoa powdertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,244 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and stay light.
Cocoa powder
Provides chocolate flavour and colour to the icing.
Icing sugar
Sweetens and thickens the icing so it becomes smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and baking powder. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough and dense and can knock air out of the creamed batter. Fold gently, only until the flour disappears.

“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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