Skip to main content
Dessert

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with sour cream, eggs, sugar, cocoa, flour, baking soda, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Sour Cream 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, blend together the sour cream, salt, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add the baking soda, sugar, cocoa powder, flour, and vanilla extract to the mixture and mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cream + cocoa powdertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that leavens the cake.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Cocoa powder
Provides chocolate flavor and color to the batter.

The step that matters

Baking time. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour cream, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Stopping at the toothpick test prevents overbaking, which dries the cake and makes its crumb tough.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCoconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipes