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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and stir well.

  3. Mix in half of the flour.

  4. Add the spices next.

  5. Stir in the whipped egg whites alternately with the remaining flour.

  6. Finally, add the brandy.

Bake and store

  1. Pour the mixture into two large, well-buttered deep tins lined with paper.

  2. Bake for at least two hours.

  3. Let the cake cool in a cool, dry place; it will keep for two months.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a fine, even texture.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the dense fruit cake.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stirring in the whipped egg whites alternately with the flour. Folding gently and alternating with flour keeps the whites' air from collapsing, so the heavy batter still rises and bakes with a light texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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