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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

Ribbon Cake is a layered loaf cake with fruit and molasses, assembled with icing or currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 batter

  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, cream of tartar, baking soda, 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 the 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 frost

  1. Once all loaves are baked, layer them with icing or currant jelly, placing the fruit loaf in the middle.

  2. Frost the top and sides of the 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. 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. 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for rising.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep sweetness to the fruit batter.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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