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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with pink, white, chocolate, and plain layers, finished with orange‑flavored frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Neapolitan Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the colouring

  1. Boil the cochineal with sugar, cream of tartar, alum, and water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain and bottle the liquid.

Make and divide the batter

  1. Make a mocha cake batter.

  2. Divide the batter in half.

  3. Stir the liquid cochineal into one half until it turns light pink.

Bake the layers

  1. Bake the pink batter as one layer.

  2. Bake the white batter as another layer.

  3. For the remaining two layers, use the same cake recipe and add one extra yolk.

  4. Melt Baker's chocolate with sugar and water over heat.

  5. Mix the melted chocolate into the remaining batter.

  6. Bake the chocolate batter as one layer.

  7. Bake the plain batter as another layer.

Assemble and frost

  1. Layer the four cakes together.

  2. Spread soft frosting flavored with orange juice over the assembled 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + orangetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Cochineal
Natural red dye that turns the batter pink.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness to the cake layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it tender and moist.
Baker's chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and a deeper colour to the mocha layers.

The step that matters

Stir the cochineal into one half of the batter. Cochineal colour is very concentrated, so adding it gradually and stopping at light pink avoids a deep red layer. Stirring it in evenly keeps the colour uniform through the batter.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, 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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