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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A spiced cake with raisins, currants, molasses, and coffee, topped with a butter and sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the spiced layer

  1. In a bowl, mix brown sugar, eggs, butter, molasses, and coffee until smooth.

  2. Add flour, raisins, currants, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and mace; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Make the light layer

  1. Cream together sugar and butter.

  2. Add milk, flour, cornstarch, egg whites, and cream of tartar.

  3. Pour into another greased cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Assemble

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Spread the stiff egg whites between the layers of the cake.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the dark layer.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in both layers.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and color to the dark layer.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to help the dark layer rise.
Cornstarch
Softens the gluten in the flour, giving the light layer a finer, more delicate crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness to the light layer and the filling between layers.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks, with no trace of fat or yolk, to trap air. Under-beaten or greasy whites deflate and leave the layers flat and dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, 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, egg, butter, 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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