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Dessert

Lillian's Devil Food Cake

A chocolate custard layered cake with boiled frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lillian's Devil Food 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 batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the flour and milk alternately until well combined.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, grate the chocolate and combine it with 1 cup milk, 1 cup sugar, and the egg yolk in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the custard over low heat until thickened, then let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, mix the custard with the cake batter.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the cake with boiled frosting between each layer and 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Chocolate
Gives the cake its deep chocolate flavor and darker color.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thickened. Egg yolk thickens as it heats, but overheating can curdle it. Cook over low heat and stop once it coats a spoon, then cool before mixing into the batter so it does not cook or thin the batter unevenly.

“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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