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Dessert

Chocolate Cakes

A chocolate cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, melted chocolate, stale bread crumbs, and flour, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Cream the butter and add the sugar.

  3. Combine the egg mixture with the butter and sugar, then add the melted chocolate, bread crumbs, and flour.

Bake

  1. Spread the mixture in a shallow buttered pan.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set.

Shape and serve

  1. Shape with a tiny biscuit cutter and pair them with White Mountain Cream in between and on top.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Bind the batter and give the cake its structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft texture.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and deep color.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb moisture, giving the cake a moist, dense crumb.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until set. A slow oven sets the eggs gently. Baking past set dries out the cake and makes it firm, so check for set rather than relying on a fixed time.

“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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