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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A two-part cake with a dark brown mixture and a white frosting, baked separately and iced with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Neapolitan Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the black part

  1. For the black part, cream together ½ cup butter, ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup molasses, and ½ cup strong coffee.

  2. Mix in 2½ cups flour, 5 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves, ½ pound raisins, ½ pound currants, and ⅛ pound citron.

Make the white part

  1. For the white part, cream ½ cup butter with 2 cups powdered sugar.

  2. Add 1 cup sweet milk, ¾ cup corn starch, 2½ cups flour, and 3 teaspoons baking powder.

  3. Fold in the beaten whites of 4 eggs.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake the black and white parts separately in jelly‑cake pans.

  2. For the icing, beat 1 egg white with the juice of 2 lemons and enough powdered sugar to make a stiff mixture.

  3. Spread the icing over the cooled cakes.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Adds richness and tenderness to both the black and white batters.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the black batter, and whipped whites lighten the white batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the white part rises and becomes light.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor to the black part.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb of the white part, giving it a tender texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten to the right stage and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving the white cake dense instead of light.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, egg, cinnamon. 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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