Skip to main content
Dessert

Brunswick Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, egg yolks, butter, egg whites, corn starch, currant jelly, and pink icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Brunswick Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Rub the egg yolks through the sugar.

  2. Melt the butter and stir it in.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Add the corn starch and mix everything together.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake on sheets of paper in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Once baked, cut the cake in half and spread currant jelly between the layers.

  3. Ice the top with pink icing and cut into slices.

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 + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and help the cake rise and stay light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness and help bind the batter.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting the flour-like structure, giving a tender, delicate texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, moistness, and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds structure when creamed with the yolks.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Under-beaten whites will not hold air, so the cake will be dense; over-beaten whites turn grainy and collapse when folded in, so stop at stiff peaks.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, corn. 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.

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes