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Dessert

A Rich Wedding Cake

A rich, buttery cake flavored with citrus peel, citron, currants, and spices, baked to a golden finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

A Rich 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.

Mix the batter

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

  3. Mix until well combined and smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until a skewer comes out clean.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb, and carries flavour through the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake structure as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, richness and a dense, tender texture to the crumb.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until a skewer comes out clean. A dense, fruit-packed cake can look set on top while its centre is still wet. Testing deep in the middle with a skewer confirms the batter has fully baked and set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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