Skip to main content
Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, cinnamon, currants, citron, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Cream the butter in a bowl, then gradually add the sugar while beating continuously.

  3. Add your choice of flavoring (lemon or nutmeg).

  4. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy, then mix in the milk.

  5. Sift the flour and return it to the sieve, mixing the baking soda and cream of tartar with it.

  6. Sift the flour mixture into the bowl of beaten ingredients and mix quickly until combined.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into three equal parts, pouring two parts into two sheet pans.

  2. In the remaining third of the batter, add cinnamon, currants, and chopped citron, then pour into the last pan.

  3. Bake all three layers until done, then remove from pans.

Assemble and press

  1. While warm, spread a thin layer of jelly on the light cake, place the dark cake on top, and spread more jelly.

  2. Top with the last layer of light cake, cover with paper, and place a thin sheet with two weights on top to press for about two hours.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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 and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor as it is creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to lift the batter as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda releases gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake all three layers until done. Thin sheet layers can dry out or over-brown quickly, and the dark currant layer may look done before its center is set. Check for springy centers and a skewer coming out clean before removing from the pans.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes