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Dessert

Ribbon Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, 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

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. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat.

  4. Add your choice of flavoring (lemon or nutmeg).

  5. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Mix in the milk.

  6. Sift the flour. Return the sifted flour to the sieve.

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

  8. Sift the flour mixture into the bowl of beaten ingredients. Mix quickly until combined.

Divide and bake

  1. Divide the batter into three equal parts.

  2. Pour two parts into two sheet pans.

  3. To the remaining batter, add cinnamon, currants, and citron. Pour the remaining batter into the last pan.

  4. Bake all three cakes until done.

Assemble and press

  1. Remove the cakes from the pans.

  2. While warm, spread a thin layer of jelly on the light cake. Place the dark cake on top. Spread more jelly. Top with the remaining light cake.

  3. Cover with paper. Place a thin sheet with weights on top to press for 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

Eggs
Beaten to add air and structure, helping the cake rise and hold together.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that works with baking soda to help the cakes rise and stay tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, moist crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Pressing the assembled cake. Pressing under weight while the layers are still warm helps them bond and compact into an even, dense slab, so the jelly layers stay in place when sliced.

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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