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Dessert

Ribbon Cake No. 1

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, molasses, spices, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Ribbon Cake No. 1

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  5. For the dark part, stir in the molasses, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, raisins, and additional flour as needed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake batter as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown while baking.
Egg
Binds the ingredients and adds structure and moisture to the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps stabilize the leavening reaction.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth. Adding dry ingredients in portions and mixing only until smooth keeps the batter evenly combined without overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough. Overmixing after the flour goes in is the usual error.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, molasses. 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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