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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, citron, molasses, and spices baked in two layers and served with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk and flour.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  6. Add salt and flavor with lemon or almond essence.

  7. Divide half of the batter into two square pans.

Make the spiced batter

  1. To the remaining batter, add molasses, raisins, citron, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and flour.

  2. Pour this mixture into two other pans of the same size.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. While warm, layer the cakes with jelly or raspberry jam in between.

  3. Slice thinly to serve.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once the batter bakes and sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk and molasses to lift the batter as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, sweet-bitter flavour to the spiced batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Layering while warm. Layering while the cakes are still warm lets the jam bind the layers together. Cooled cakes firm up and can crack or slide apart when stacked.

“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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