Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cake

A layered chocolate cake with a chocolate cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Chocolate Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the cake batter

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour, egg whites, baking powder, and grated chocolate.

  5. Divide the batter into 4 layers.

Bake and make the cream

  1. Bake the layers until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the cream, combine 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of sugar, corn starch, egg yolks, and grated chocolate in a saucepan.

  3. Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly.

Assemble

  1. Spread the cream while warm between the layers and over the top of the cake.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped or folded into the batter to add structure and lift to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream by gelatinizing when heated with the milk and sugar.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cake rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that form the cake's structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil and is stirred constantly; stopping early leaves a runny cream, while overheating with egg yolks can scramble them and leave lumps.

“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 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes