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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, powdered sugar, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and flavored with lemon, chocolate, rose water, and fruit coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and powdered sugar.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and baking powder.

  5. Divide the batter into three equal parts.

Flavor and bake

  1. Flavor one part with lemon, color the second part with chocolate and flavor with vanilla, and color the third part with fruit coloring and flavor with rose water.

  2. Pour each colored batter into separate cake pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the icing and assemble

  1. For the icing, combine sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then beat in the egg white and flavor with rose water.

  3. Layer the cakes with icing in between each layer.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give a fine, tender crumb.
Egg white
Whipped into the icing to give it body and a light, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Let the icing syrup cool slightly before beating in the egg white. If the syrup is too hot, it can cook the egg white, causing lumps and a grainy icing instead of a smooth, glossy one.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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