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Dessert

Chocolate Loaf Cake

A chocolate loaf cake made with chocolate, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chocolate Loaf Cake

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Loaf Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Grate the chocolate and mix it with the milk and the yolk of one egg.

  2. Heat the mixture on the back part of the stove until dissolved and warmed through.

  3. Set the chocolate mixture aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the remaining egg whites and combine with sugar and butter.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  3. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and enough flour to create a thin batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake carefully.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 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

Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and rich, dark colour of the cake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb soft and moist.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.

The step that matters

Heating the chocolate mixture gently. Chocolate can scorch or seize when overheated. Gentle, low heat melts it smoothly and keeps the mixture silky, which helps the batter bake evenly.

“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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