Name: Barley Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: 1½ cups barley flour; 1 cup corn syrup or sorghum; 3 teaspoons baking powder; ½ cup syrup and ½ teaspoon baking soda or 1 cup honey; 2 tablespoons fat; 1 egg yolk; 1½ squares chocolate; ½ cup water; 1 teaspoon vanilla

Why it works: Barley and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 128 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Melt the fat and chocolate together.
Sift the dry ingredients.

Make the batter

Beat the egg yolk, then add the syrup and water, and mix well.
Combine the liquid and dry ingredients, then add the melted chocolate and fat.

Bake

Bake as individual cakes.

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.

Barley + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together128 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,855 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,241 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Barley flour: Forms the cake's structure as the main dry ingredient.
Corn syrup or sorghum: Adds sweetness and moisture, keeping the cake tender.
Baking powder: Produces gas that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Egg yolk: Adds richness and helps bind the batter.
Chocolate: Provides the chocolate flavour and some fat for richness.

“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.