Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake layered with custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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 oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Sift flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the mixture.

  5. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into batter.

  6. Divide batter into two equal parts; grate German sweet chocolate into one half.

  7. Pour chocolate batter into greased loaf pan or layer pans.

Bake and make the custard

  1. Bake according to marble cake directions or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For custard filling, combine 1 cup sugar, yolks of 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon butter, and 2 teaspoons corn starch dissolved in a little milk in a saucepan.

  3. Add 1 pint milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thick.

  4. Let custard cool, then spread between cake layers.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten to stiff peaks add lift and an airy, tender crumb to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
German sweet chocolate
Grated into one half of the batter to give the cake its chocolate flavour and marbled color.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard filling as it cooks, giving it a smooth, spreadable set.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Corn starch thickens only when the custard reaches a full simmer while stirred constantly. Stopping early leaves it runny, and stirring stops it scorching on the base of the pan.

“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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes