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Wedding Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the powdered sugar and butter together until smooth. If it's cold, warm them slightly.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and mix them into the butter and sugar alternately with the flour, stirring vigorously.

  3. Sift all the spices together and gradually add them along with the cream and brandy.

  4. Dredge all the fruits with sifted flour, mix them in, and stir the entire mixture for 10 to 15 minutes, reserving one-fourth of the citron for the top.

  5. If the cake is for long keeping, ensure to include brandy. Finish with chocolate or vanilla icing.

  6. Do not remove the cake from the pan until it is cold. Rub it with flour, wipe it with a cloth, and ice it with egg white icing, adding chocolate or vanilla icing.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 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

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, cream, brandy, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More wedding cake recipes

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