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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, eggs, butter, milk, flour, baking soda, salt, molasses, raisins, citron, cinnamon, cloves, and flavored with lemon or almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

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

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the flour and salt, and flavor with lemon or almond extract.

  6. Divide half the batter into two square pans.

Make the spiced batter and bake

  1. To the remaining batter, add molasses, raisins, citron, cinnamon, cloves, and flour.

  2. Pour this mixture into the other two pans.

  3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Assemble

  1. Layer the cakes with jelly or raspberry jam.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep sweet flavour to the spiced layers.

The step that matters

Baking until a toothpick comes out clean. Both batters are cooked in the same oven, so the cake can dry out if baked too long. Testing the centre with a toothpick shows when the crumb has set without overbaking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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