Skip to main content
Dessert

White Cake

A light, sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, candied orange peel, mace, brandy, flour, currants, and powdered almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
White Cake

Why it works: Brandy and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sifted sugar and dried sugar, mixing well.

  3. Whisk the egg yolks and whites separately, then combine them.

  4. Stir in the candied orange peel, mace, and brandy.

  5. Gradually mix in the flour until fully incorporated.

  6. Fold in the currants and powdered almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fresh butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Whisked eggs add structure and lift, helping the batter set as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb while creaming with butter.
Powdered almonds
Add richness and a moist, tender crumb along with nutty flavor.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy bursts of flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking time and pan preparation. A two-hour bake is long for a batter this rich, so the cake can dry out or over-brown on top if the oven runs hot. Preparing the pan properly helps the cake release cleanly once baked.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, orange, brandy, flour, currant. 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.

More white cake recipes

Egg 9Icing 8Plain 6Warsaw 5Almond 3Coconut 3 See all 331 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes