Skip to main content
Dessert

Harlequin Cake

A layered cake with chocolate, pink, and plain layers topped with lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Harlequin 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  5. Divide the dough into four parts.

Bake the layers

  1. Color one part with melted chocolate and another with pink food coloring; leave the other two uncolored.

  2. Bake each part in separate tins at 350°F (175°C) until done.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. Beat the egg whites and mix with water, lemon rind, and juice.

  2. Slowly pour this mixture over the sugar and flour, cooking until smooth and thick.

  3. Layer the colored cakes with lemon jelly in between.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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
Creams with the sugar to give the cake tenderness and a rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and structure to the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cake as it sets when baked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, helping the leavening react and keeping the crumb fine.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the layers.
Egg whites
Beaten to add air and lightness to the filling, helping it set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg white mixture until smooth and thick. Egg whites thicken and set when heated, but if the heat is too high or uneven they can curdle or turn grainy. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the mixture thickens evenly and stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes