Skip to main content
Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with a dark loaf flavored with molasses, coffee, spices, raisins, currants, and citron, topped with a white loaf and lemon frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Neapolitan 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 dark batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup butter and 2 cups brown sugar.

  3. Add 1 cup molasses and 1 cup strong coffee, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine 4½ cups sifted flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 2 teaspoons cloves, and 1 teaspoon mace.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until combined.

  6. Fold in 1 pound raisins, 1 pound currants, and ¼ pound citron.

  7. Pour the batter into round jelly pans, ensuring the loaves are 1½ inches thick.

Make the white batter

  1. For the white cake, cream together 1 cup butter and 4 cups white sugar.

  2. Add 2 cups sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups corn starch and 4½ cups sifted flour.

  4. Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, then add 8 beaten egg whites, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and ½ teaspoon extract of bitter almonds.

  5. Pour the white cake batter into prepared pans and bake until done.

Frost and assemble

  1. Once cooled, frost each black loaf with a mixture of 1 beaten egg white, grated rind of 2 lemons, juice of 3 lemons, and enough powdered sugar to create a thick frosting.

  2. Place a white loaf on top of each black loaf and frost as 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that coats flour and softens the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and deep sweetness to the dark loaves.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure; whites add lift and a lighter crumb in the white cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to produce gas that lifts the dark batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the white cake's crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the dark batter into pans of even thickness. Dense fruit-filled batter bakes slowly, so loaves of uneven thickness will cook unevenly, leaving some parts raw in the middle while others dry out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, egg, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipes