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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A sponge cake soaked in sweet wine or sherry and brandy, topped with almonds and rich custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the bottom of the cake level to make it stand firm in the dish.

  2. Make a small hole in the center of the cake.

Soak and decorate

  1. Pour sweet wine or sherry mixed with brandy over the cake to soak it nicely.

  2. Once soaked, blanch and cut the almonds into strips and stick them all over the cake.

Add the custard

  1. Pour the rich custard around the cake.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge or savoy cake
Provides the absorbent base that soaks up the wine and brandy.
Sweet wine or sherry
Moistens the cake and adds sweetness and flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth to the soaking liquid.
Sweet almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavour on the surface.
Eggs
Set the custard, giving it richness and body.

The step that matters

Soaking the cake. The cake should be soaked slowly and fully so the liquid is absorbed evenly. Older, slightly dry cake takes up liquid better than fresh cake, which can turn soggy or collapse.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, brandy, egg, milk):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, brandy, egg, milk. 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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