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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake with a chocolate icing made from melted chocolate, sugar, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Divide the batter into layers and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and assemble

  1. For the icing, melt the chocolate and mix it with 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the chocolate mixture.

  3. Spread the icing between the layers of 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the recipe to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and stabilizing the egg whites.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the chocolate icing and give it a airy texture.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the chocolate. Whipped whites hold air that gives the icing its lightness. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

“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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