Skip to main content
Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, raisins, currants, citron, molasses, cinnamon, mace, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ribbon Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs. Mix well.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  4. Add the sifted flour and baking powder to the mixture along with the milk.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  6. Divide the batter into three parts.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake two parts as plain cake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, citron, molasses, cinnamon, and mace to the third part. Bake the third part.

  3. Layer the cakes with jelly 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure; beaten whites give lift and a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavour to the dark layer.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring hard knocks out the air trapped in the whites, so the batter loses its lift and the cake bakes up dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, milk, raisin, molasses. 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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes