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Dessert

Dolly Varden Cake

A layered cake with spiced batter and jelly filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Dolly Varden 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 until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon extract. Mix until well combined.

  4. Divide the batter in half and pour one half into two greased cake pans.

  5. To the remaining batter, add molasses, raisins, currants, chopped citron, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Mix well.

  6. Pour the spiced batter into the other two greased cake pans.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake all four layers in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, layer the cakes alternately with jelly and the beaten egg white.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  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 flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the layers rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, working with the baking soda to lift the cake and stabilise texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and colour to the spiced layers.

The step that matters

Bake all four layers until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking soda and cream of tartar lift the batter only while it is in the oven; underbaking leaves a gummy, sunken centre, while overbaking dries the crumb and makes the layers brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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