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Dessert

Grand Duke Cake

A layered cake with almond, raisin, and fig filling, topped with white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Grand Duke 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites and vanilla.

Bake and fill

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, cook 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water until it forms a syrup that strings.

  3. Stir the syrup into the beaten egg white.

  4. Add the chopped almonds, raisins, and figs to the mixture.

  5. Spread the filling between the layers and ice the top with white icing.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks and folded in, adding lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's layers together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling syrup to the stringing stage. Sugar syrup that is cooked too little stays runny and soaks the layers, while overcooking makes it hard and brittle. Stopping at the stringing stage gives a filling that holds its shape when spread.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

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