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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking powder, powdered sugar, and grated chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, egg yolks, and baking powder; mix thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently.

  6. Pour the batter into two greased chocolate cake pans.

  7. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Make the icing and finish

  1. For the icing, dissolve the grated chocolate in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Stir in the powdered sugar until smooth.

  3. Ice the cake while it is still hot.

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture and emulsifying power to the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, causing the cake to rise and become airy.
Grated chocolate
Gives the icing its chocolate flavour and deep colour.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the batter. Egg whites hold air only while whipped; overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense cake instead of a light, well-risen one.

“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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