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Devil's Food Cake

This classic American cake is moist and dark but with a sweet frosting; crisp on top and like marshmallow underneath.

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 92,116 recipes mention both. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Devil's Food Cake

Serves 8

Ingredients

  • For the American Frosting.

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cocoa + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together956 recipes

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

Egg and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 106,462 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour):

  1. Almondbetter flavor fit
  2. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Milletbetter flavor fit
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).