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Dessert

Chocolate Drop Cakes

Chocolate Drop Cakes are a sweet baked treat made with butter, sugar, chocolate, nuts, raisins, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chocolate Drop Cakes

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

  2. Melt the chocolate over hot water, then stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar and boiling water until smooth.

  3. Add the melted chocolate mixture to the creamed butter and sugar.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg into the mixture.

  5. Fold in the chopped nuts and raisins.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the cakes structure as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it cream to a light, fluffy texture.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and fat, adding richness and a dense texture.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that help the cakes rise and stay tender. Under-creaming leaves a dense result.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, chocolate, nuts):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, chocolate, nuts. 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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