Skip to main content

Midsummer Dream Wedding Cake

A tour de force for the Bake Off final. If it's too much work for you try making the beautiful edible decorations for a simpler cake.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 76 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and beetroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 18 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Makes 1 three-tiered wedding cake
Prep2 hr

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Rhubarb + beetroottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + syruptop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Ginger + rhubarbtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together503 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, syrup, flour, ginger, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, syrup, flour, ginger, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).