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Neapolitan Cake

A two-layer cake with a dark batter and a white batter, baked and iced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

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 batters

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

  2. In a bowl, mix brown sugar, butter, eggs, molasses, coffee, flour, raisins, currants, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. In another bowl, cream white sugar and butter, then add sweet milk, flour, corn starch, egg whites, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the black batter into one layer and the white batter into another layer in cake pans.

  2. Bake the layers until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Cool the layers and layer them with icing 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavour and the dark colour of the black batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the dark batter.
Corn starch
Softens the flour's gluten, giving the white layer a fine, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Overbaking dries the crumb, while underbaking leaves the centre wet and prone to sinking as it cools.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, molasses, coffee, flour, 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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