Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Nougat Layer Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, egg whites, chocolate nougat filling, nuts, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Nougat Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl, then gradually add the sugar while beating continuously for 5 minutes.

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder three times.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add a little water, then a little flour, and a little egg white to the butter mixture, continuing until all ingredients are combined.

  5. Beat the mixture continuously for 2 minutes.

  6. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the chocolate nougat filling

  1. While baking, melt the chocolate, butter, and sugar over hot water, then boil until it forms a soft ball in ice water.

  2. Stir in the chopped nuts and let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the vanilla to the cooled mixture.

Assemble

  1. Once the cakes are cold, layer them with the chocolate nougat filling.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 create a tender, aerated crumb and adds richness.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff to lighten the batter and help the cakes rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake layers as it sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to make the cake layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when cooked, forms the soft-ball nougat filling.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor of the nougat filling and sets it as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling the nougat to soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the soft-ball stage to set correctly when cooled. Undercooking leaves the filling runny, while overcooking makes it hard and grainy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes