Skip to main content
Dessert

Devil Cake

A chocolate cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, sour milk, flour, chocolate, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Devil 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 bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the flour until combined.

  6. Melt the Baker's chocolate in the boiling water and let it stand.

  7. Combine the chocolate mixture with the batter and mix until smooth.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let cool and frost with white frosting.

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, moist crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding, helping the cake hold together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce the gas that lifts the batter. Mixing it fully into the sour milk before adding it lets the reaction happen evenly, so the cake rises well and has an even texture.

“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 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes