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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large sweet cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, raisins, citron, currants, brandy, and spices, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins, citron, currants, and spices.

  6. Stir in the brandy until well incorporated.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and smooth the top.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 3 to 4 hours, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. Let the cake cool completely before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream with butter to build a light texture.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and moistens the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. A long, low bake lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through to the centre. Pulling it early can leave raw batter in the middle, while overbaking dries the crumb.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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