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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, spices, raisins, and golden syrup, topped with icing sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Divide the mixture into three equal parts.

Bake

  1. To one part, add the raisins, golden syrup, chopped lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  2. Pour each part into a shallow round tin and bake until done.

Assemble and serve

  1. While the cakes are still hot, stack the one with fruit between the other two, using egg white to help them stick together.

  2. Sprinkle icing sugar on top before serving.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set firmly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give it a tender, fine texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Golden syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel flavour to the fruited layer.

The step that matters

Stacking the layers while still hot. Warm layers join more readily, and the egg white helps them bond. Once cooled and firm, the layers are harder to join and more likely to crack or slip when handled.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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