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Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A chocolate cake made with baker's chocolate, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

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 chocolate mixture

  1. Grate the baker's chocolate and mix it with ½ cup of milk.

  2. Add the egg yolk, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

  3. Boil until dissolved.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Add ½ cup of milk, 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 2 eggs to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the cooled chocolate mixture.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. Once cooled, put icing between the layers.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Baker's chocolate
Gives the cake its chocolate flavor and color.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender texture and browning.

The step that matters

Let the chocolate mixture cool before stirring it into the batter. If the hot chocolate mixture goes into the creamed butter and sugar, it can melt the butter and loosen the batter, leading to a denser or greasier cake. Cooling keeps the batter emulsified and stable.

“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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