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Dessert

Variety Cake

A multi-layered cake with orange, vanilla, rose, and lemon flavored layers, colored with chocolate, cochineal, and topped with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Variety Cake

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Variety Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate and vanilla layers

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk, egg yolks, baking powder, and flour; mix well.

  3. Divide the batter in half.

  4. Flavor one half with orange water and the other with vanilla, adding grated chocolate for color.

  5. Pour the batter into two jelly tins and bake.

Make the rose and lemon layers

  1. For the second cake, cream the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the sweet milk, egg whites, baking powder, and flour.

  3. Divide this batter as well.

  4. Flavor one half with rose water and the other with lemon, coloring with pulverized cochineal.

  5. Pour into two jelly tins and bake.

Assemble and frost

  1. Once baked, layer the brown cake first, then the white, followed by the red, and lastly the yellow, with jelly between each layer.

  2. Frost the top with boiled icing and, once cold and hard, decorate with a funnel of frosting.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture, and structure to the batter as it bakes and sets.
Egg whites
Whipped or added to the batter, they add lift and a lighter, airier crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, making the layers rise and become light.

The step that matters

Waiting for the frosting to cool and harden before decorating. Boiled icing is a hot sugar syrup that sets as it cools. Piping a funnel of frosting onto it too early can cause it to slump or blur, so it should be cold and firm first.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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