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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, and fruit, baked in three pans and frosted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  3. Prepare three equal-sized buttered shallow cake pans.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and then the flour mixed with baking powder.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Divide the batter into three parts.

  6. For the third part, mix in the raisins, currants, citron, molasses, brandy, mace, and cinnamon.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake two pans plain.

  2. Bake the third layer in the third pan.

  3. Once baked, layer the cakes with the fruit layer in the middle, spreading jelly between them.

  4. Press each layer lightly to ensure they stick together.

  5. Trim the edges and frost with plain or boiled 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.

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites add lift and a light, open crumb.
Butter
Fat creamed with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps aerate the batter and adds sweetness and tenderness.
Pastry flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the layers together after baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the layers their lift. Stirring or mixing too hard deflates the foam, so the cakes bake up dense and flat. Fold gently, just until no white streaks remain.

Swap the currant

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