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Dessert

Schuyler Wedding Cake

A large, spiced cake made with brown sugar, butter, brown flour, eggs, raisins, citron, currants, almonds, molasses, brandy, rum, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Schuyler Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large container, mix together the brown sugar, butter, brown flour, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the raisins, citron, currants, and chopped almonds to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the molasses, brandy, and Jamaica rum.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and pearl ash, then add to the mixture.

  5. Mix thoroughly until all ingredients are evenly incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared baking pans.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 16 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Browned flour
Provides the structure of the cake and a toasted, nutty flavour.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a robust, slightly bitter sweetness.
Pearl ash
Alkaline leavening that helps the batter rise and darkens its colour.

The step that matters

Long, slow baking. The batter is very rich and dense, so a low oven held for the full 16 hours lets the heat reach the centre gently. Too much heat would brown and harden the outside before the inside sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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