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Dessert

Lady Washington Wedding Cake

A spiced fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, almonds, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Lady Washington 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cut up the raisins and citron, then roll them in flour.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs, beaten very light, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the fruit mixture, then add the flour.

  4. Finally, mix in the wine and brandy.

  5. Let the batter rise for 3 hours.

Bake and soak

  1. Bake for 3 hours, then let the cake soak for at least 2 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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Almond + flourtop 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. Almond + buttertop 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 add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream the butter into a light base.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit-rich cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and creaming the butter and sugar. Eggs beaten very light and butter creamed until fluffy trap air in the batter, which helps the cake rise and keeps the crumb light despite the heavy fruit.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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