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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake with light and dark layers, flavored with lemon or nutmeg, cinnamon, currants, citron, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while beating continuously.

  3. Add flavoring (lemon or nutmeg).

  4. Beat the eggs until very light.

  5. Add the eggs and the milk.

  6. Sift the flour and return it to the sieve.

  7. Mix in the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  8. Sift the flour mixture into the bowl of beaten ingredients, then mix quickly.

  9. Divide the batter into three equal parts.

Bake the layers

  1. Pour two parts into two sheet pans.

  2. In the remaining third, mix in the cinnamon, currants, and citron.

  3. Pour the mixture into the last pan.

  4. Bake all three layers until done.

  5. Remove from pans.

Assemble and press

  1. While warm, spread the light cake layer with a thin layer of jelly.

  2. Place the dark cake layer on top.

  3. Spread with jelly.

  4. Top with the remaining light cake layer.

  5. Cover with paper and a thin sheet.

  6. Place two weights on top to press for about two hours.

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture, and help the batter hold air when beaten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Mixing once the flour goes in. Once flour is added, overmixing develops gluten and makes the cake tough, so the flour should be mixed in quickly and only until combined. The leavening also starts reacting as soon as it is wet, so the batter should be baked without delay.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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