Skip to main content
Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered fruit cake made with butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

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 batters

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

  2. Cream the butter and eggs together, then add the milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Reserve one-third of the batter and pour the rest into two greased loaf pans.

  4. To the reserved batter, mix in the raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and spices.

  5. Pour the fruit mixture into a third greased loaf pan.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake all three loaves until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, stack the loaves with the fruit loaf in the middle, using icing or currant jelly to hold them together.

  3. Frost the top and sides of the stacked 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. 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides 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 and richness as the cake sets.
Butter
Creams with the eggs to add richness and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the fruit loaf.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture, and color to the fruit batter.

The step that matters

Baking all three loaves until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking soda and cream of tartar start lifting the batter as soon as they are mixed, so the loaves should go into the oven promptly. Doneness is judged by a clean toothpick, since a dense fruit batter can look set on top while the center is still wet.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes