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Dessert

Neapolitan Cake

A layered cake with dark and white parts, flavored with coffee, spices, dried fruit, and lemon icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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.

Make the dark batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of butter and 2 cups of brown sugar. Add 1 cup of strong cold coffee and mix well.

  3. Sift together 4 ½ cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, 2 teaspoons of powdered cloves, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon of powdered mace; then add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in 4 eggs, 1 pound of seeded raisins, ½ pound of chopped figs, and ½ pound of well-washed currants.

  5. Pour the dark batter into jelly‑cake pans and bake until done.

Make the white batter

  1. For the white part, cream together 1 cup of butter and 4 cups of white sugar. Add 2 cups of sweet milk and mix well.

  2. Sift together 4 cups of flour, 2 cups of corn starch, and 3 teaspoons of baking powder; then add to the mixture.

  3. Beat in the whites of 8 eggs and 3 drops of bitter almond extract.

  4. Pour the white batter into jelly‑cake pans and bake until done.

Assemble and frost

  1. Grate the peel and squeeze the juice from 2 lemons; mix with enough powdered sugar to stiffen the juice.

  2. Spread the lemon mixture between alternating layers of dark and white cake.

  3. Frost the top and sides of the cake with lemon icing.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Adds richness and tenderness to both the dark and white batters.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and lift; the whites in the white batter help it rise and stay light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the dark batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic coffee and helps the dark batter rise.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb of the white batter, giving it a tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten in at the end carry the air that lightens the white layers. Mixing them too hard deflates that air, leaving a dense cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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