Skip to main content
Dessert

Harlequin Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, food coloring, chocolate, jelly, and frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Harlequin 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. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Divide the batter into four parts.

  7. Leave two parts plain, add food coloring to one part, and melt the chocolate into the last part.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batters into prepared cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Layer the cakes with jelly between them and frost the top.

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. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilizing it and supporting the rise with baking soda.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender while creaming with butter.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which helps prevent a tough cake. Baking soda and cream of tartar also need even distribution so the rise is uniform.

“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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes