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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

Ribbon Cake is a layered fruit cake with a sweet batter and a fruit batter, topped with icing.

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 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 cooled, stack the three loaves with icing or currant jelly between them, 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and bind during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust turn golden through browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and milk to release gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep flavor to the fruit loaf.

The step that matters

Cool the loaves fully before stacking. Warm loaves are soft and crumbly, so stacking them too early can squash or break the layers. Cooling lets the crumb firm up so the icing or jelly holds the layers together cleanly.

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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