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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A rich butter and sugar cake with eggs, flour, baking powder, currants, raisins, citron, brandy, sherry, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Wedding 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs slowly, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and gradually add it to the mixture.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Soak the currants, raisins, and citron in the brandy and sherry for a while.

  2. Fold the soaked fruits and grated nutmeg into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  4. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about three hours.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Currants, raisins, and citron
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy and sherry wine
Soak the fruit, adding aroma and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs slowly. Eggs added too quickly can curdle the creamed butter and sugar, breaking the emulsion. Adding them gradually and mixing well after each one keeps the batter smooth so the cake rises evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, raisin, brandy, sherry. 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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