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Dessert

Devil Cake

A chocolate cake with a cocoa icing, made with brown sugar, butter, baking soda, flour, eggs, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the boiling water and add to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the sifted flour and eggs, mixing until smooth.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Make and spread the icing

  1. For the icing, mix the egg white with cocoa powder and boiling water.

  2. Add enough powdered sugar to thicken the icing.

  3. Spread the icing over the cake while it is still warm.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + cocoa powdertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,244 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the cake a soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture when creamed with the sugar.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set and hold together.

The step that matters

Spread the icing while the cake is still warm. Icing spreads smoothly on a warm cake, which softens slightly and absorbs it better. Waiting until it cools can leave the icing patchy or cracked.

“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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