Skip to main content
Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with dark and light portions made from butter, sugar, molasses, coffee, flour, eggs, raisins, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Neapolitan 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dark batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar.

  3. Add ½ cup molasses, ½ cup strong coffee, 2½ cups flour, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and ½ pound raisins. Mix well.

Make the light batter

  1. In another bowl, cream ½ cup butter and 2 cups white sugar.

  2. Add 1 cup sweet milk, 4 egg whites, 3 cups flour, and 3 teaspoons baking powder. Mix until smooth.

Layer and bake

  1. Pour the dark batter into the prepared pan.

  2. Pour the light batter over the dark batter.

  3. Repeat layers.

  4. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 give the batter richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and coffee to lift the dark batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the light batter to make it rise and stay light.
Molasses
Adds moisture, depth of flavor, and a darker color to the dark batter.

The step that matters

Layering the batters. The dark and light batters rise at different rates because they use different leavening, so pouring them carefully keeps the layers distinct instead of mixing into one batter.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes