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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

Ribbon Cake is a layered cake with a molasses and spice flavored middle and a sweet filling of sugar, milk, butter, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Ribbon 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 batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Combine the milk with the cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Add the milk mixture to the batter.

  6. Gradually add the flour and divide the batter into three parts.

Bake the layers

  1. Bake two parts until light.

  2. To the remaining third, add molasses, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, raisins, citron, currants, and flour.

  3. Bake the spiced third part.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine sugar and milk in a saucepan and cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat, add the walnut-sized butter, and stir until thickened. When thickening, add chopped walnuts.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once the cake is cool, spread filling on one light layer.

  2. Top with the dark layer.

  3. Spread with jelly.

  4. Add the other light layer on top.

  5. Frost if 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, when used, give lightness and structure to the cake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, open texture.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once set by heat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep color and a rich, slightly acidic flavor to the spiced layer.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling. The filling sets as it cools, so cooking it until thickened is needed for it to spread without running. Stirring keeps the milk and sugar from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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