Skip to main content
Dessert

Sandwich Cake

A layered cake with a spiced raisin batter and white frosting.

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

Sandwich 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. Cream together the butter and sugar until light.

  3. Add the egg whites and milk, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Remove 2 tablespoons of batter and set aside.

  6. To the reserved batter, mix in the molasses, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and a little more flour.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the main batter into two greased layer cake pans and the spiced batter into one.

  2. Bake the layers until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  3. Once cooled, layer the cakes with white frosting.

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. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Egg whites add structure and help the batter rise and hold its crumb.
Butter
Creaming butter with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the layers rise.
Molasses
Adds dark colour, moisture and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness to the spiced layer.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. Pulling the layers too early leaves wet, sunken centres, because the starches and proteins need full heat to set. Check with a toothpick, and test the darker molasses layer carefully since its colour hides doneness.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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

More sandwich cake recipes

Jam 7Raspberry 4Orange 3Victoria 3 See all 19 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes