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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large sweet cake made with butter, sugar, molasses, spices, eggs, raisins, and flour, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the molasses, lemon juice, and spices, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks, then mix in the flour with the baking soda sifted in.

  4. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites and mix thoroughly.

  5. Flour the fruit and add it last.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours or longer if needed.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 rich batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy batter together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cake rise and darken.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with some acidity.
Raisins or currants
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the dense fruit cake.

The step that matters

Flouring the fruit before adding it. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the thick batter instead of sinking to the bottom while baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, molasses, lemon, clove, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, molasses, lemon, clove, allspice. 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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