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Dessert

Bride Cake

A rich butter and sugar cake studded with raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, and flavored with alcohol and lemon oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bride Cake

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bride Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the butter into pieces and let it soften.

  2. Cream the softened butter, then add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add the spices and flour, then fold in the fruit except for the citron.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the citron in the batter: one inch from the bottom, one inch from the top, and one in between.

  2. Smooth the top of the cake with a spoon of water.

  3. Bake for 3 to 4 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whipped whites add lift and a lighter structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as the cake sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light, fluffy batter.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewiness and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the heavy batter. Overmixing or deflating them while folding loses that lift, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, raisin, flour, nutmeg, lemon. 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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