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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with a light batter and a dark chocolate mixture, topped with a simple icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, egg, and baking soda, and mix well.

Make the dark part

  1. For the dark part, boil together the sugar, milk, and grated chocolate until thickened.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the yolk of one egg.

  3. Combine the dark mixture with the light mixture while hot.

Bake

  1. Pour into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil the sugar and water until it hairs off a spoon.

  2. Stir into the beaten egg white.

  3. Add flavor and beat until nearly cold.

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 + 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. Milk + chocolatetop 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and keeps it moist and tender.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the dark part its chocolate flavor and deep color.

The step that matters

Stir the hot syrup into the egg white. Pouring the hot sugar syrup slowly into the beaten egg white cooks and stabilizes the foam. Pouring too fast or letting the syrup cool too much can leave the icing runny or grainy, so beat steadily until it cools.

“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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Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

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