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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, milk, egg whites, molasses, raisins, spices, and egg yolks.

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add to the creamed mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Make the middle layer

  1. For the middle layer, take out 4 tablespoons of the batter and mix in the molasses, ⅓ cup flour, raisins, cloves, baking soda, cinnamon, and egg yolks.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the three layers separately.

  2. Layer the middle layer between the other two with jelly or soft icing.

  3. Ice the top.

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

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lift and structure as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the middle layer.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the middle layer.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the middle layer rise and darken.

The step that matters

Make the middle layer batter. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the molasses, to react and leaven properly. Measure the soda carefully, because too much leaves a soapy, bitter taste and uneven rise.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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

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