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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, dried fruits, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs and brandy, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, spices, and dried fruits.

  4. Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture until thoroughly combined.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter into 6 loaf pans.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 4 hours.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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 trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 4 hours. Long, low heat lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through evenly without the outside over-browning or drying before the centre sets.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, currant, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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