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Dessert

Wedding Cake.

A layered butter and pecan cake with lemon butter filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pecans and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,691 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Wedding Cake.

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks, water, pecans, and vanilla flavor.

  4. Sift the baking powder with the flour and add it alternately with the whipped egg whites.

  5. Divide the batter into four layers and bake in the hot oven.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat the butter and sugar over low heat, adding the egg yolks and lemon juice until smooth.

Finish

  1. Ice the cake with the cooked icing.

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. Pecans + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter, while yolks add richness and help bind the structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that sets the cake's structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the filling and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Beating the filling over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast. Gentle, steady low heat with constant beating thickens the mixture smoothly, so it stays silky instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pecans, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pecans, sugar, egg, vanilla, flour. 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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