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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, milk, flour, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ribbon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture along with the cream of tartar and flour. Beat well and divide the batter into three equal portions.

  4. To one portion, add the egg whites; to another, add the egg yolks; and to the third, add the chopped raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake each portion separately.

  2. Once baked, layer the cakes with jelly or a mixture of egg and sugar in between.

  3. Frost the cake and cut it into slices, ensuring the fruit layer is in the center.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites and yolks are added separately, giving the layers structure and a richer, lighter crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps browning.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is set by baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so that the baking soda reacts and lifts the cake.

The step that matters

Dividing the batter into three equal portions. Equal portions bake into layers of even thickness and similar texture. Unequal portions bake unevenly, so the layers may not match when stacked and sliced.

Swap the currant

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

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

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