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Dessert

Tri-colored Cake

A layered cake with white, pink, and yellow layers, each made with different egg parts and sugar types.

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

  3. Fold in the egg whites gently.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour the batter into two thin square cake pans and bake until golden.

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

  3. For the third layer, use the same quantity as the first but with the yolks of the eggs, bake in two cake pans.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once baked, spread jelly between the layers, placing 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 provide structure when folded in, while yolks add richness and color to the yellow layers.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once the batter is baked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that works with baking soda to lift the batter and stabilize the egg whites.
Red sugar sand
Sweetens the pink layer and adds its color to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving layers dense and flat.

“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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