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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A light, airy cake flavored with raspberry or vanilla, layered with apricot jam and almond paste, topped with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 257 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Neapolitan 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. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Cream the yolks and sugar for about five minutes.

  3. Add the melted butter and continue to cream until very light.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  5. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  6. Add the whipped egg whites alternately with the flour to the yolk mixture.

  7. Divide the mixture in half; color one half pink and flavor with raspberry essence or rose water.

  8. Leave the other half yellow and flavor with vanilla.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in two greased sandwich tins at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

  3. Spread apricot jam on both cakes.

  4. On one cake, add a layer of almond paste made from 3 oz. ground almonds.

  5. Stack the two cakes together.

  6. Pour chocolate icing over the top and decorate with royal icing or blanched pistachio nuts.

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. Apricot + raspberrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together257 recipes

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

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + raspberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together552 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give lift and a light, airy crumb, while yolks add richness and structure.
Castor sugar
Creams with the yolks to add sweetness and help trap air for a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, nutty flavor and a dense, sweet layer in the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Adding the whites alternately with the flour, rather than stirring hard, keeps the air bubbles intact. Overmixing deflates the batter, which leads to a flat, dense cake.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, almond, chocolate, raspberry. 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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