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Dessert

Raspberry Venice Cakes

A light sandwich cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and raspberry jam, topped with Royal Icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raspberry Venice Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar until very light.

  2. Add the melted butter and stir in the flour lightly.

  3. Spread the mixture in a square-edged tin about ¾ inch thick.

  4. Bake until golden, then turn out to cool.

Assemble and finish

  1. Split the cake with a sharp knife and spread raspberry jam in between.

  2. Close the cake like a sandwich and spread the top with Royal Icing.

  3. Cut into squares or lengths as desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Whisked with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, risen structure.
Sugar
Whisked with the eggs for airiness and adds sweetness and tender browning.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving a tender crumb after baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together once baked.
Raspberry jam
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour lightly. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten and makes the cake tough and dense. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs and sugar, so the sponge stays light.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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