Skip to main content
Dessert

Black and White Cake

A two-batter cake with a light white layer and a dark layer containing brown sugar, molasses, raisins and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Black and White 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the white batter

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

  2. Cream together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add ½ cup sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup flour, ½ cup cornstarch, and 1 teaspoon baking powder.

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

Make the black batter

  1. In another bowl, cream together 1 cup brown sugar and ½ cup butter.

  2. Stir in ½ cup sour milk and 1 teaspoon baking soda.

  3. Add 1½ cups flour, ½ cup raisins, ½ cup nuts, 3 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon molasses, and spices to taste. Mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Layer the white and black batter in a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. 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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the white batter as they set in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture to the dark batter and help bind it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that makes the dark batter rise.
Brown sugar
Adds moisture and a deeper, molasses-like sweetness to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Layering the two batters. Pour the batters gently so they stay in separate layers rather than blending. The white batter is lighter and the black batter is denser, so heavy pouring can mix them and blur the contrast.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes