Skip to main content
Dessert

Montgomery Wedding Cake

A rich fruit cake with butter, sugar, spices, raisins, currants, citrus, molasses, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Montgomery Wedding Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs until very light, then gradually stir in the brown sugar, spices, molasses, and creamed butter, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them into the mixture alternately with the sifted flour.

  4. Add the brandy and all the fruit, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 1.5 hours in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten its structure and help it rise.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the cake.
Currants
Add tart, chewy fruit flavour and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped to a stiff froth trap air that lightens the heavy batter. Folding gently, and alternating with the flour, keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake bakes up lighter rather than dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin, lemon, orange, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes