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Dessert

Chocolate Drop Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, chocolate, nuts, raisins, and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate Drop Cakes

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. Cream the butter and ¾ cup sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Melt the chocolate over hot water, then stir in 1 tablespoon sugar and boiling water until smooth.

  3. Add the melted chocolate mixture to the creamed butter and sugar.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg into the mixture.

  5. Fold in the flour, baking powder, salt, chopped nuts, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that sets the drops into a cake rather than a puddle.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture as it sets in the oven.
Chocolate
Supplies the main chocolate flavour and some richness to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the drops rise and lighten.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Melt the chocolate gently over hot water. Chocolate can seize or turn grainy if overheated. Gentle heat, plus stirring in the boiling water, keeps it smooth so it blends evenly into the batter.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, chocolate, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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