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Dessert

Tri-colored Cake

A layered cake made with white, red, and yellow layers, finished with jelly and sugar.

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 ↓

Tri-colored 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the white sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, baking soda, and cream of tartar, and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

Bake the layers

  1. Divide the batter into two equal portions and pour them into two thin square cake pans.

  2. For the red layer, use half the original quantity of ingredients, substituting red sugar sand for white sugar, and bake in one cake pan.

  3. For the yellow layer, use the same quantity as the original, incorporating the yolks of the eggs, and bake in two cake pans.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once baked, spread jelly on the cakes and layer them: place the pink cake in the center, the white cakes on each side, and the yellow cakes on top and bottom.

  2. Frost or sprinkle with sugar as desired.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs (whites)
Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts and lightens the cake.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
An acid that stabilizes the whipped whites and works with baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the batter. Whipped whites hold the air that lightens the cake. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate the batter and leave a dense layer.

“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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