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Dessert

Prince of Wales Cake

A two-part cake with a dark and a white layer, spiced with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flavored with lemon.

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 ↓

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 dark batter

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

  2. For the dark part, cream together ½ cup butter and 1 cup brown sugar.

  3. Add 4 egg yolks, ½ cup sour milk, 1 cup chopped raisins, ¼ teaspoon baking soda, 1 tablespoon molasses, 1 tablespoon ground cloves, 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon, and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg. Mix well.

  4. Gradually add 2 cups flour and mix until combined.

Make the white batter

  1. For the white part, cream together 1 cup butter and 1 cup white sugar.

  2. Add 4 egg whites, ½ cup sweet milk, 1 cup corn starch, and 1 cup flour. Mix until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake both mixtures in layers until golden.

  2. Layer the dark and white cakes alternately with icing in between.

  3. Flavor with lemon.

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

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to form a tender, fine-textured crumb structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dark batter.
Egg whites
Add lift and structure to the white batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to lighten the dark batter and aid rising.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep sweetness to the dark layers.
Corn starch
Gives the white layers a fine, tender crumb and a paler color.

The step that matters

Layering the dark and white cakes with icing. Both batters must be fully baked and cooled before layering, since warm or underbaked layers can slump, smear the icing and make the stacked cake unstable.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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