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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered coconut, raisin, citron, and lemon cake with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Neapolitan Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dark batter

  1. Sift 3 cups of flour with 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

  2. Cream together 2 cups of brown sugar and 1 cup of butter.

  3. Stir in the 8 beaten eggs, followed by 5 heaping tablespoons of grated coconut.

  4. Add the flour mixture and ½ cup of sweet milk, then fold in 1 pound of raisins and ½ pound of chopped citron.

  5. Bake in jelly tins at 350°F (175°C).

Make the light batter

  1. For the second batter, cream 1 cup of butter with 2 cups of sugar.

  2. Add 3 cups of flour, ½ cup of sweet milk, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and the juice and grated rind of 1 lemon.

  3. Bake in jelly tins at 350°F (175°C).

Assemble and ice

  1. Stack the cakes alternately dark and light, filling with a mixture of the whites of 8 eggs, 4 tablespoons of grated chocolate, and enough powdered sugar to make a good icing.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Beaten eggs add structure and moisture to the dark batter, helping it set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air that gives both batters a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the layers together once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Brown sugar
Adds moisture and a deeper, caramel-like sweetness to the dark layers.
Raisins
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Stack the cakes alternately dark and light. The layers must be fully cooled before filling, or the warm cake will soften the egg-white icing and the layers can slide apart.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, egg, coconut, milk, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, coconut, milk, raisin. 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.

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