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Dessert

Cheap Jam Sandwich

A baked cake with jam and coconut, known as a cheap jam sandwich.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cheap Jam Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the lard into the flour in a bowl.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Add the sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla extract, and beat for 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in the baking powder last.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased flat tin.

  4. Bake for about 12 minutes.

Finish

  1. Spread with raspberry jam and sprinkle with desiccated coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + raspberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, which tenderises the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure while adding richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly at the surface.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking powder last. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet and mixed, so it should be folded in at the end and the batter baked promptly. Mixing it in early or leaving the batter to stand lets the gas escape before the oven sets the structure, which can leave the cake flat and dense.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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