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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with sugar, butter, egg yolks, grated chocolate, milk, almonds, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Melt the grated chocolate and stir it into the mixture.

  4. Add the milk and mix until combined.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

  7. Chop the almonds and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter trap air for a light crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and its creaming traps air that helps the cake rise tender.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it hold together smoothly.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Grated chocolate
Adds flavor, richness and moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring just until smooth keeps the batter emulsified and limits gluten development, which helps prevent a dense or tough cake.

“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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