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Dessert

Schuyler Wedding Cake

A large, spiced cake made with brown sugar, butter, flour, eggs, raisins, currants, molasses, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Schuyler 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. In a large container, mix together the brown sugar, butter, browned flour, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the raisins, citron, currants, and chopped almonds to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the molasses, brandy, and Jamaica rum.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and pearl ash, then add to the mixture. Mix thoroughly until all ingredients are evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared baking pans.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 16 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give the cake structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown during long baking.
Browned flour
Provides the structure of the cake and a toasted, nutty flavor.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Long, slow baking at 300°F (150°C) for 16 hours. A dense, fruit-heavy batter needs gentle, prolonged heat so the centre sets and dries evenly without the outside scorching. Too hot or too short a bake leaves the middle raw or the crust burnt.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, raisin, almond, 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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