Skip to main content
Dessert

Dolly Varden Cake

A layered cake with dark and light parts, raisins, currants, spices, and a powdered sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Dolly Varden 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 dark part

  1. For the dark part, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup sugar.

  2. Add 4 egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in 1 cup milk, then add 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 cup chopped raisins, 1 cup currants, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg. Mix until combined.

Make the light part

  1. For the light part, beat 3 egg whites until stiff.

  2. In another bowl, cream ½ cup butter and 1½ cups sugar.

  3. Add 1 cup milk, then mix in 2 cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Bake, layer and frost

  1. Bake both mixtures in square tins at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the dark and light parts alternately with jelly in between.

  3. For the frosting, beat 1 egg white and gradually add 1 cup powdered sugar until smooth.

  4. Spread the frosting on top of the cake.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites add richness and structure, and the stiffly beaten whites lighten the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both the dark and light batters.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites so the light layer stays airy. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and make the cake dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes