Skip to main content
Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, raisins, currants, citron, spices, molasses, brandy, and eggs, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the flour, raisins, currants, citron, grated nutmeg, mace, and cloves, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture along with the molasses and brandy. Mix until all ingredients are well combined.

Bake

  1. Divide the batter into six large loaf pans.

  2. Bake for three hours, checking for doneness with a straw; if it comes out clean, the cake is done.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy, fruit-filled batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, adding structure and richness.
Butter
Fat that creams with sugar to trap air and keep the crumb tender.
Sugar
Creams with butter for aeration, and adds sweetness and moisture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep flavor and color, and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness with a straw. A large, dense, fruit-packed cake bakes slowly, and its center can stay wet even when the edges look set. Testing the center with a straw confirms the batter has fully set, so the cake is not underbaked.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, raisin, egg, currant, nutmeg. 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 wedding cake recipes

Black 6Fruit 5Rich 4Icing 4Pudding 4Montgomery 3 See all 105 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes