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Dessert

Prince of Wales Cake

A layered cake with white and dark batters, raisins, cinnamon, and a sugar syrup and egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Prince of Wales Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batters

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. For the white part, cream together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter, then add the whites of 3 eggs, 2 cups flour, ½ cup sweet milk, and 1 teaspoon baking powder. Mix well.

  3. For the dark part, cream together 1 cup brown sugar and ½ cup butter, then add the yolks of 3 eggs, ½ cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour, 1 cup seeded raisins, 1 tablespoon cinnamon, a little nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon baking powder. Mix well.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the white batter into 2 jelly tins and the dark batter into 2 jelly tins.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  3. For the icing, dissolve 1½ cups sugar in water and boil until it forms a thread.

  4. Beat the whites of 2 eggs to a stiff froth, then stir in the hot syrup and beat until cold.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and structure to the crumb.
Eggs
Whites add lift and structure; yolks add richness and colour to the dark layers.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise when baked.
Seeded raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the dark layers.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled to a thread so it sets the icing properly; beating the whites until the mixture is cold lets the meringue-like foam firm up into a stable icing.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk, 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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