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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A sweet cake made with powdered sugar, flour, sweet cream, corn starch, egg whites, butter, baking powder, and whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wedding 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 the batter

  1. Wash the butter until it is white before using.

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and powdered sugar until very light and white.

  3. Add the sweet cream and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, mixing thoroughly.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  7. Stir in the whiskey.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, providing the cake's main structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps make it fine-textured.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg white foam holds the air that lifts the cake. Stirring or overmixing deflates it, leaving a denser, heavier crumb after baking.

“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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