Name: Tipsy Cake
Ingredients: 12 stale small sponge cakes; ½ cup raisin wine; ½ lb jam; 1 pint custard; cut preserved fruit for decoration

Why it works: Raisin and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the stale sponge cakes in the raisin wine.
Arrange the soaked cakes in a deep glass dish in four layers.
Spread a layer of jam between each layer of sponge cake.

Assemble and serve

Pour the custard around the cakes.
Decorate the top with cut preserved fruit.

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.

Raisin + winetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,324 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale sponge cakes: Act as the structure, soaking up the wine and holding the layers together.
Raisin wine: Moistens the sponge and adds a fruity, aromatic flavour.
Jam: Adds sweetness and moisture between the layers.
Custard: Adds richness and a creamy, moist texture around the cakes.

“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.