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Dessert

Gateau De Punch a LA Prince De Galles

A Savoy cake flavored with orange and lemon sugars, rum, and decorated with currant jelly, icing, spun sugar, jam, and silver skewers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Gateau De Punch a LA Prince De Galles

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 cakes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare a mould in the shape of the Prince of Wales's feathers.

  3. Flavor the Savoy cake batter with orange and lemon sugars and ½ cup of old rum.

  4. Bake the batter in the mould as usual.

  5. Bake another pound of similar batter in a square paper case to form a cushion.

  6. Trim the square cake into a cushion shape and mask it with red currant jelly.

Decorate and assemble

  1. Cover the cushion entirely with transparent purple icing.

  2. Form the cord and tassels from spun sugar.

  3. Mask the feathers with hot diluted apricot jam, then with Maraschino white icing.

  4. Secure the cushion on an oval base made of baked confectioners' paste with caramel sugar.

  5. Fasten the feathers upright using 6 ornamental silver skewers topped with caramel fruits.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + apricottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + red curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Rum + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Red currant + apricottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy cake batter
Forms the light, sponge-like structure of both the feathers and the cushion.
Old rum
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter as it bakes.
Red currant jelly
Provides a glossy, sticky base that helps the purple icing adhere to the cushion.
Apricot jam
Creates a sticky, glossy layer that helps the white icing adhere to the feathers.

The step that matters

Trim the square cake into a cushion shape and mask it with red currant jelly.. Trimming the cake evenly gives a smooth, well-shaped cushion, and a thin, even jelly layer helps the icing bond and stay smooth.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, lemon, rum, apricot):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, lemon, rum, apricot. 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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