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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large cake made with flour, butter, sugar, raisins, currants, eggs, spices, wine, brandy, rose water, baking soda, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Wedding 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. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl.

  3. Gradually add the strained juice of a lemon while beating.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately until frothy.

  5. Add the beaten eggs to the butter and sugar mixture.

  6. Take a handful of sifted flour and stir it in, then add the remaining flour.

  7. Incorporate the grated mace or pounded mace.

Bake

  1. Prepare cake pans with a tube in the center, butter them well.

  2. Pour the batter into the pans and bake for 3 to 4 hours at moderate heat.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Beaten yolks and whites add structure and lift to the batter.
Unsalted butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Its proteins set into the cake's structure as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps trap air in the batter.
Currants
Dried fruit adds sweetness, moisture and chewy texture to the cake.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the pans and bake for 3 to 4 hours at moderate heat.. A long, moderate bake lets heat reach the dense center slowly so the cake sets through without burning the outside. Underbaking leaves a gummy middle, so test for doneness before removing it from the oven.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, currant, egg, clove. 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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