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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered fruit loaf cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Ribbon 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 large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, Royal Baking Powder, flour, and eggs; mix well.

  4. Reserve one-third of the batter.

Bake the loaves

  1. Pour the remaining batter into two greased loaf pans and bake until golden.

  2. To the reserved batter, add raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and mixed spices; mix well.

  3. Pour the fruit batter into a greased loaf pan of the same size and bake until golden.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once cooled, stack the three loaves together using egg white or jelly to hold them.

  2. Place the fruit loaf in the middle and frost the top.

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming aerates the batter.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the loaves rise and stay light.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor to the fruit loaf.

The step that matters

Baking the loaves until golden. Bake each loaf only until golden and set. Overbaking dries the crumb, and the stacked layers need to be cool and firm before assembly so they hold together without crumbling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

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