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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A sponge cake soaked in wine and topped with a warm custard of milk, eggs, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sponge cake in a glass bowl.

  2. Pour 1 pint of light wine over the cake.

  3. Optionally, split the cake and spread jelly on it before placing it in the bowl.

  4. Garnish the top with halved blanched almonds.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a rich boiled custard by heating milk, whisking in eggs and sugar until thickened.

  2. Flavor the custard with lemon and pour it warm over the cake until the bowl is full.

  3. Serve any remaining custard in a glass pitcher.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the absorbent base that soaks up the wine and custard.
Light wine
Soaks into the sponge cake, adding flavor and moistness to the base.
Eggs
Thicken the milk into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it stay smooth as it thickens.
Blanched almonds
Add a light nutty crunch and a decorative finish on top.

The step that matters

Whisking eggs into the hot milk. If the eggs are added too hot or too fast, they scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Heating gently while whisking keeps the custard silky and properly set.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, milk, egg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, milk, egg, sugar, lemon. 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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