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Dessert

Cocoa Cake

A moist chocolate cake made with cocoa, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the cocoa, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, and vanilla until well combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Divide the batter between two greased cake pans.

  2. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let the cakes cool before frosting with boiled 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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich fat flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully blended before the next goes in. Eggs added too fast can fail to emulsify with the butter and sugar, causing a curdled, dense batter.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Cocoathe original

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

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