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Dessert

Wine Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, and wine, finished with boiled icing flavored with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wine Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Separate the eggs; add the yolks to the butter and sugar mixture and beat well.

  3. Add the wine and the flour mixed with baking powder alternately to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a solid cake pan or in layers with wine jelly in between.

  2. Ice with boiled icing flavored with wine.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, carrying flavor and softness into the crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter; whipped whites lighten it and help the cake rise and set.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cake bakes and holds its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Wine
Adds moisture and a distinct flavor, with acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown it while tenderizing the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that leavens the batter. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in, so the cake rises evenly and stays light.

“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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