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Dessert

Tri-colored Cake

A layered cake with white, pink, and yellow layers, made with sugar, flour, butter, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, egg whites, yolks, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Tri-colored 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the white sugar and butter. Add the flour, sweet milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and egg whites; mix well.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into two thin square cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. For the pink cake, use half the quantity of the same ingredients, substituting red sugar sand for white sugar, and bake in one cake pan.

  3. For the yellow cakes, use the same quantity as the first, but with the yolks of the eggs, and bake in two cake pans.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread jelly between the layers, placing the pink cake in the center, the white cakes on each side, and the yellow cakes on the top and bottom.

  2. Frost or sprinkle with sugar before serving.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Whites give structure and lift to the batter, while yolks add richness and colour to the yellow layers.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the layers rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda, helping the cake rise and stay tender.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Dividing the batter into thin layers and baking until golden. Thin layers bake quickly and evenly, so they need watching to avoid drying out. Baking until golden signals browning, which adds flavour, but over-baking makes the layers dry and crumbly.

“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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