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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A multi‑layer cake made with egg whites, sugar, butter, cornstarch, milk, flour, baking powder, spices, currants, and various fillings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until stiff.

  3. Cream together the sugar and butter in another bowl.

  4. Add the cornstarch, milk, flour, and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix well.

  5. Divide the batter into four equal parts.

Flavor and color

  1. To one part, add the mixed spices and currants.

  2. Color one part pink and leave the other two parts plain.

Bake and layer

  1. Pour the batters into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the cakes with chocolate between the white and pink layers, jelly between the pink and brown layers, and coconut and walnut meats between the brown and white layers.

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. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

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

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air that helps the cake rise and gives a light crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a tender texture and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the layers rise.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's gluten, producing a finer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites trap air that lifts the batter. Overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy and lose their ability to hold air, so the cake rises less and bakes up denser.

Swap the currant

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

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

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