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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

Ribbon Cake is a layered cake made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, eggs, raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and mixed spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, baking powder, and eggs; mix well.

  4. Reserve one-third of the batter.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the remaining batter into two greased cake pans of the same size.

  2. To the reserved batter, add the raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and mixed spices; mix well.

  3. Pour this mixture into a third greased cake pan of the same size.

  4. Bake all three cakes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Assemble and frost

  1. Once cooled, layer the cakes with icing or currant jelly, placing the fruit cake in the middle.

  2. Frost the top and sides 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cakes set in the oven.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit layer.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture and a darker color to the fruit batter.

The step that matters

Dividing the batter evenly. The reserved third is split into the fruit layer and the plain layers should match in size so the cakes bake at the same rate and stack level. Baking to a clean toothpick test prevents the fruit layer from staying wet in the centre, since dense batters with fruit need the full bake to set.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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