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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with a dark batter, a white batter, and lemon frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 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 black cake

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, molasses, and coffee.

  3. Add the sifted flour, eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, mace, raisins, currants, and citron. Mix well.

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

Make the white cake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. In another bowl, mix sugar, sifted flour, corn starch, butter, milk, and baking powder. Flavor the mixture with bitter almond flavoring and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour this batter into the same pans as the black cake.

  4. Bake both cakes until done, then let them cool.

Frost and assemble

  1. Spread a thick coating of lemon and sugar frosting on each black cake.

  2. Beat the egg white, add grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and enough powdered sugar to thicken.

  3. Stack each white loaf on top of each black loaf and frost with lemon 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. 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the dark and white cakes.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and coffee acids to lift the dark cake.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and deep sweetness to the black cake.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to lighten and raise the white cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas to leaven the white cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the white batter. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in, so the cake rises evenly and stays light instead of dense.

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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