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Dessert

Mahogany Cake

A chocolate cake made with flour, cocoa, sugar, milk, and vinegar, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Mahogany Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, and baking soda four times.

  2. Cream the shortening and sugar together.

  3. Gradually add some of the dry mixture and some of the milk, mixing well.

  4. Finally, add the vinegar.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Layer with chocolate filling and icing.

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming aerates the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Vinegar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to make the cake rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar last. Vinegar reacts with baking soda to release carbon dioxide, which lifts the batter. Adding it at the end, just before baking, keeps that gas from escaping before the cake is in the oven.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, vinegar. 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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