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Dessert

Harlequin Cake

A layered cake with white, pink, and chocolate layers, topped with a simple sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk, then add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Divide the batter into four parts: two white, one pink (using fruit coloring), and one chocolate.

Bake and make the icing

  1. Pour each part into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the icing, boil 1 cup of sugar with 4 tablespoons of water until it ropes from the spoon.

  3. Remove from heat and add to the beaten egg white, mixing well.

  4. Add flavoring to the icing and spread between the layers of cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites lighten and give structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, tender texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Boiling the icing sugar to the ropes stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before it meets the egg white. Too little boiling leaves a runny icing that will not hold; too much makes it hard and grainy once it cools.

“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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