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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with white and dark batter, raisins, currants, and lemon frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

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.

Prepare the batters

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

  2. In a bowl, mix cornstarch, powdered sugar, baking powder, sweet milk, egg whites, sifted flour, and butter until smooth.

  3. In another bowl, combine brown sugar, butter, coffee, molasses, egg yolks, sifted flour, cinnamon, and baking soda.

  4. Add raisins, citron, and currants to the dark mixture.

Bake

  1. Layer the dark mixture between two layers of the white mixture in a cake pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat egg white.

  2. Add lemon juice.

  3. Add water.

  4. Add grated lemon rind.

  5. Stir in confectionery sugar to thicken and frost 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Egg whites
Provide structure and lift to the light batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness to the dark batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both batters.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the dark batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to help the dark batter rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Two batters are layered together, and the dark batter is dense with fruit and molasses, so it can stay wet in the center. Testing the center with a toothpick confirms the cake is set throughout before it cools.

“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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