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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, currants, brandy, citron, and nutmeg, baked until risen and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Crush the butter between your hands until creamy.

  2. Beat the butter with the sugar for 15 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and mix with the butter and sugar.

  4. Beat the yolks for 30 minutes and mix them in.

  5. Add the flour and nutmeg, and beat until combined.

  6. Pour in the brandy and add the citron strips.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking tin.

  2. Bake until risen and browned, then cover with paper to prevent burning.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb once baked.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the batter.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps trap air when beaten with the butter.
Eggs
Whites trapped as a froth lighten the batter; yolks add richness and help set the crumb.
Currants
Add fruit and chewiness, and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Covering the cake while it bakes. A long-baked, fruit-rich cake browns quickly on the outside before the centre sets. Covering it with paper slows surface browning so it can bake through without burning.

Swap the currant

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

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

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