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Dessert

Chocolate Cake Without Flour

A dense chocolate cake made without flour, using eggs, sugar, chocolate, nuts, cracker crumbs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,592 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake Without Flour

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 the batter

  1. Sift and measure the cracker crumbs, grate the chocolate, and separate the eggs.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar using a strong mixer.

  3. Add the grated chocolate, cracker crumbs, and brandy to the egg mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes, or in two shallow pans for 15 minutes.

Ice and finish

  1. Make a marshmallow icing.

  2. Spread the icing between the layers, reserving some for the top.

  3. Melt a small square of Baker's chocolate and mix it into the reserved icing.

  4. Spread the icing on top.

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. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Clove + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,362 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites are beaten and folded in to give the batter lightness, while yolks enrich it.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
Sweet chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and richness in the batter.
Cracker crumbs
Replace flour as the dry binding base, giving body to the batter.
Walnuts or pecans
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring rather than folding deflates the whites' foam, so the cake rises less and turns dense. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, walnut, chocolate, brandy. 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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