Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Caramel Cake

A chocolate cake made with caramelized chocolate and sweet milk.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Caramel 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.

Prepare the chocolate

  1. Break chocolate into small pieces and place in a double boiler over low heat.

  2. Add ½ cup sweet milk and stir until thick, then remove from heat and let cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, ½ cup butter, and 1 cup milk until well combined.

  2. In another bowl, combine 3 cups flour and 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the butter mixture, then gradually mix in the flour mixture.

  4. Fold the cooled chocolate mixture into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cake to rise as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Chocolate (in the method)
Gives the cake its chocolate flavour and deep colour.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour mixture. Once flour is added, overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Mix just until the flour disappears into the batter.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes