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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, raisins, currants, citron, spices, molasses, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, raisins, currants, citron, grated nutmeg, mace, cloves, molasses, and brandy. Mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs.

  5. Fold the eggs into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into six large loaf pans.

  2. Bake for three hours.

  3. Check 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and richness as they set during baking.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetness, and creamed with butter it helps build a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the eggs. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs, so the batter stays light rather than deflating. Overmixing after adding flour can toughen the crumb.

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.

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