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Dessert

Prince of Wales Cake

A layered cake with dark and white parts, made with butter, flour, sugar, raisins, spices, and egg yolks or whites, finished with icing and lemon.

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 ↓

Prince of Wales 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 batters

  1. For the dark part, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks, sour milk, molasses, baking soda, and spices; mix well.

  3. Fold in the flour and chopped raisins.

  4. For the white part, cream together the butter and white sugar.

  5. Add the egg whites, sweet milk, and corn starch (or additional flour if not using corn starch); mix until smooth.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake both mixtures in layers until golden.

  2. Layer the dark and white cakes alternately with icing in between.

  3. Flavor with lemon.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the dark and white batters.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as the batter sets in the oven.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to the dark colour of the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dark batter.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the white batter rise and set.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to lift the dark batter.

The step that matters

Mix the white batter until smooth. Overmixing once the flour and corn starch are added can develop too much gluten and toughen the cake, while undermixing leaves lumps in the batter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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