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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with molasses, currants, and spices, baked in three parts and assembled with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk, flour, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

  4. Divide the batter into three equal parts.

  5. To one part, add the molasses, currants, and spices. Mix well.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour one part of the batter into each of two greased cake pans.

  2. Pour the spiced batter into a third greased cake pan.

  3. Bake all three cakes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  4. Once baked, layer the light cake, spread with jelly, then add the dark cake, more jelly, and top with the remaining light cake.

  5. Cover with a paper, invert onto a plate, and place a weight on top until cool.

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the spiced layer.

The step that matters

Testing the bake. Cakes continue to cook from residual heat after leaving the oven, and pulling them too early can leave the centre gummy and sunken. Checking the centre with a toothpick until it comes out clean confirms the structure has set.

Swap the currant

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

  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, molasses. 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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