Skip to main content
Dessert

Tunbridge Cake

A sponge cake layered with fruit jelly, wine, meringue, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tunbridge 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.

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake the plain sponge cake in a cylinder mold and let it cool.

  2. Cut the cake into thin slices and lay the bottom piece on a plate.

  3. Spread fruit jelly and wine over a slice, then repeat with the remaining slices.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar to make a meringue.

  2. Cover the top and sides of the cake with the meringue.

  3. Dust sugar over the meringue and bake at 350°F (175°C) until lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Slide the cake onto a glass dish and surround it with whipped cream.

  2. Flavor the whipped cream with extract to taste.

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

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

  2. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Plain sponge cake
Provides the light, porous base that soaks up the jelly and wine.
Fruit jelly
Adds moisture, sweetness and fruit flavor between the cake layers.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets into a crisp, airy meringue when baked.
Sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue, helping it brown.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, cool contrast to the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar gradually. Sugar added slowly to whipped egg whites dissolves and stabilizes the foam. Adding it too early or too fast can leave the meringue weeping or limp.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes