Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with sugar, butter, sour milk, baking soda, flour, grated chocolate, cold water, egg yolk, vanilla, and optional nuts or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Stir in the sour milk and baking soda.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Boil and stir the batter until smooth.

  5. Let it cool, then add the grated chocolate, cold water, egg yolk, and vanilla.

  6. Mix in chopped nuts or raisins if desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

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

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

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

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

Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide for lift.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as the batter sets.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter and add moisture.

The step that matters

Boil and stir the batter until smooth. Boiling the batter gelatinizes the starch and cooks the mixture, while stirring keeps it smooth and evenly mixed so it does not form lumps or uneven texture. Let it cool before adding the egg yolk so the yolk does not scramble.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, chocolate, egg, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

More chocolate cake recipes

Filling 18French 14Marbled 13Black 11Dark 10Marble 7 See all 565 →

You might also like

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