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Dessert

A Large Rich Two-guinea Cake

A rich cake made with butter, eggs, powdered sugar, spices, brandy, citrus peel, almonds, flour, currants, and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Large Rich Two-guinea Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the butter and eggs

  1. Rub the butter in a large copper preserving pan until very fine.

  2. Break the eggs in another large pan and whisk them for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the powdered sugar to the eggs and whisk over low heat until warm.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat and whisk until cold.

  5. Mix the egg and sugar mixture with the butter using your hands.

Build the batter

  1. Add the ground mace, cinnamon, and brandy to the mixture.

  2. Chop the lemon, orange peel, and citron.

  3. Add the chopped citrus peel and the chopped sweet almonds to the mixture.

  4. Sift the flour.

  5. Add half of the sifted flour to the mixture.

  6. Add the currants to the mixture.

  7. Pound the bitter almonds with a little powdered sugar to prevent oiling.

  8. Add the bitter almonds and the remaining flour to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Prepare a large cake pan by lining it with four sheets of parchment paper.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Bake the cake until done.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 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

Fresh butter
Creams with the sugar and eggs to give the cake its rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Whisked to foam and bound into the batter to provide structure and lift.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the eggs hold air when whisked.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while moistening the batter.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar to warm, then cold. Warming the eggs and sugar over low heat helps the sugar dissolve and the mixture thicken, and whisking until cold stabilizes the foam so the batter keeps its air before the flour is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, lemon, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, lemon, orange. 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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