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Ribbon Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, eggs, raisins, milk, flour, baking powder, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, milk, and sifted flour with baking powder.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the remaining ingredients to one-third of the dough, with a little more flour.

  2. Bake in three greased cake pans.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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
Adds fat that makes the cake tender and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, even crumb when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter for easier mixing.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together traps air in the fat. These air pockets expand in the oven and help the cake rise and turn out light, so the mixture should look pale and fluffy before adding other ingredients.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, molasses, egg, raisin, milk, flour. 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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