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Dessert

Variety Cake

A multi-layered cake with brown, white, red, and yellow layers, flavored with orange, vanilla, rose, and lemon, and frosted with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Variety Cake

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Variety Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first cake

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks, baking powder, and flour.

  4. Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture.

  5. Divide the batter in half; flavor one half with orange water and the other with vanilla, adding grated chocolate for color.

  6. Pour the batter into two jelly tins and bake.

Make the second cake

  1. For the second cake, cream the butter and sugar, then add the sweet milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and mix in the baking powder and flour.

  3. Divide this batter; flavor one half with rose water and the other with lemon, adding pulverized cochineal for color.

  4. Pour into two jelly tins and bake.

Assemble and frost

  1. Once baked, layer the brown cake first, then the white, followed by the red, and lastly the yellow, with jelly between each layer.

  2. Frost the top with boiled icing and, once cold and hard, decorate with a funnel of frosting.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they add lift and a light, airy structure to the second cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the jelly tins and bake. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so the batter should go into the tins and into the oven promptly. Waiting lets the lift fade, which can leave the layers dense and flat. Layers that are uneven in thickness will also bake unevenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, vanilla, chocolate. 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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