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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large, fruit‑laden cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, wine, brandy, rose water, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Wedding 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Combine flour, mace, cloves, cinnamon, and baking soda in a separate bowl.

  5. Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture, alternating with wine, brandy, and rose water.

  6. Fold in raisins, citron, and currants until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into prepared cake pans and smooth top.

  2. Bake for 2 to 3 hours, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender crumb and richness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Currants
Add chewy fruit pieces and sweetness throughout the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic wine and molasses to lift the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually, mixing well after each, lets them emulsify fully into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them too quickly can cause the batter to curdle and bake up unevenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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