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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with dark and white loaves, flavored with molasses, coffee, spices, raisins, currants, citron, and frosted with lemon and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Neapolitan 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 dark batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter, brown sugar, and molasses.

  3. Stir in the strong coffee.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and mace.

  5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Fold in the eggs, raisins, currants, and citron.

  7. Pour the batter into round pans with straight sides, ensuring the loaves are 1½ inches thick.

Make the white cake

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar for the white cake.

  2. Add the sweet milk to the white cake batter.

  3. Mix in the corn starch and sifted flour for the white cake.

  4. Fold in the egg whites and baking powder.

  5. Bake the white cake in the same pans as the dark cake.

Frost and assemble

  1. Once cooled, frost the black loaves with a mixture of beaten egg white, lemon rind, lemon juice, and enough powdered sugar to make a thick frosting.

  2. Layer the black and white loaves alternately.

  3. Frost the entire cake.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 the cake sets in the oven.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the dark cake.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to lift the dark batter.
Egg whites
Whipped or beaten, they add lightness and structure to the white cake and frosting.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into round pans with straight sides, ensuring the loaves are 1½ inches thick.. Uniform thickness lets the loaves bake evenly through, so the centers set without the edges over-browning. Thick, heavy fruit batters can also stay gummy in the middle if the layer is too deep.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, egg, cinnamon. 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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