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Dessert

Bride Cake

A large, spiced cake with currants, almonds, and candied citrus, flavored with mace, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bride Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bride 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl using your hands.

  2. Gradually beat in the sugar for 10 minutes.

  3. Whip the egg whites until very frothy.

  4. Mix the frothy egg whites with the butter and sugar.

  5. Beat the egg yolks for about 20 minutes.

  6. Add the beaten yolks to the mixture.

  7. Stir in the flour, mace, and nutmeg, mixing until combined.

  8. Pour in the brandy.

  9. Gently fold in the currants and almonds.

Prepare and bake

  1. Prepare a cake pan by wrapping the bottom with three sheets of paper and greasing it with butter.

  2. Layer the cake batter with the sweetmeats in three layers, ensuring cake is between each layer.

  3. Cover the cake with paper once it has risen and is colored.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for three 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whites add lift when whipped, and yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps hold air in the creamed butter.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol evaporates during baking.

The step that matters

Cover the cake once it has risen and is colored. Covering too early traps steam and slows browning, while leaving it uncovered too long lets the top darken or dry out before the long bake finishes. Covering at the right moment protects the crust while the centre cooks through slowly at low heat.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, mace, nutmeg, egg, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, mace, nutmeg, egg, almond. 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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