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Dessert

Twelfth Cake, Lady Caroline Lamb's

A rich, yeasted cake with currants, raisins, almonds, candied peel, spices, cream, butter, eggs, rose water, cardamom brandy, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Twelfth Cake, Lady Caroline Lamb's

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the flour, currants, raisins, sugar, sweet and bitter almonds, candied orange and lemon peels, and spices thoroughly.

  2. In a gentle heat, combine the cream and butter until melted.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then combine the yolks of six more eggs.

  4. Add rose water, cardamom brandy, Rhenish (or hock/champagne), yeast, and salt to the egg mixture.

  5. Strain the liquid mixture and add the warm dry ingredients to form a light, smooth batter.

  6. Let the batter rise in a warm place for 20 minutes.

Bake and finish

  1. Butter a cake hoop and add flour as needed to stiffen the batter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 hours, covering with floured brown paper to prevent burning.

  3. Ice the cake in the usual manner and decorate with ornaments before the icing dries.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb once baked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
Yeast
Leavens the batter so it rises before baking.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise before baking. Yeast needs a warm rest to produce gas and lighten the batter. If it is under-risen, the cake bakes dense; the stiffening flour must be added with care so the rise is not knocked out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, almond, orange, lemon, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, almond, orange, lemon, cream. 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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