Skip to main content
Dessert

Harlequin Cake

A multi‑layered cake with chocolate, pink, orange, and vanilla layers, topped with lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Harlequin 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

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

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

Flavor and bake

  1. Divide the batter into four equal parts.

  2. Leave two parts plain, flavor one with orange extract, and the other with vanilla extract.

  3. Color the third part with melted chocolate and the fourth with pink food coloring, adding strawberry extract.

  4. Bake each colored batter in separate pans until done.

Assemble and frost

  1. Layer the cakes: light, chocolate, light, pink, spreading lemon jelly between layers.

  2. To make lemon jelly, beat one egg and mix with water, lemon rind, and juice.

  3. Slowly pour this mixture over sugar and flour, cooking until smooth.

  4. Frost the assembled cake with white frosting.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; proteins help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, lifting the batter so the cake rises.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, adding lift.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown it while tenderising the crumb.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the egg mixture over the sugar and flour while cooking. Adding liquid slowly and stirring keeps the flour and sugar from clumping. Flour starch must be heated in liquid to thicken, and the egg proteins can scramble if the heat is too high, so the mixture needs steady attention until smooth.

“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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes