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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the milk and eggs, then mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, and mix until smooth.

  5. Reserve one-third of the batter.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the remaining batter into two greased cake pans and bake until golden.

  2. Stir the raisins, citron, currants, molasses, and mixed spices into the reserved batter.

  3. Bake the reserved batter in a separate pan until done.

Assemble and frost

  1. Layer the three cakes with icing or jelly.

  2. Place the fruit layer in the middle.

  3. 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and sweetness to the fruit layer.
Molasses
Adds dark colour, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the fruit into the reserved batter. Fruit is heavy and can sink or make the batter wet if overmixed or added unevenly. Stir gently so the fruit is evenly distributed and the layer bakes through without sinking.

Swap the currant

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