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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large cake made with flour, sugar, butter, raisins, currants, citron, lemon, spices, brandy, rosewater, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour, reserving a little to sprinkle over the fruit.

  4. Smooth the spices in the brandy and add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the fruit and finally add the baking soda dissolved in the rosewater or a little hot water.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into four loaf pans.

  2. Bake slowly for 3 hours.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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 and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake slowly for 3 hours. A low oven heats the dense, fruit-heavy batter gently so the centre sets without the outside over-browning or drying. Rushing with higher heat risks a burnt crust and a raw middle.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin, lemon, cinnamon, 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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