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Harlequin Cake

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 ↓

Harlequin Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, then the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Mix in the milk and the flour combined with baking powder.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Divide the batter into four parts.

  6. Color one part with melted chocolate and another with pink food coloring.

  7. Pour the batters into four round layer cake pans.

  8. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  9. Cool the cakes, then layer them starting with a light layer, followed by the chocolate layer, another light layer, and top with the pink layer.

  10. Spread Lemon Filling between the layers.

  11. Cover the top of the cake with White 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.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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