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Dessert

Dolly Varden Cake

A layered cake with light and dark batter, flavored with molasses, raisins, citron, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Dolly Varden 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. Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and eggs, then mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until smooth.

  4. Divide the batter in half; pour one half into jelly tins.

  5. To the remaining batter, add molasses, raisins, citron, cinnamon, and cloves.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the dark batter into jelly tins and bake both layers until done.

  2. Once cooled, layer the dark and light cakes with frosting in between.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through its fat content.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the dark layer.

The step that matters

Baking both layers until done. The light and dark batters bake at the same time in separate tins, so each must be checked for doneness individually. Underbaked centers collapse or turn gummy, while overbaking dries the crumb and makes layers hard to stack evenly.

“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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