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Dessert

Mollie S Bride Cake

A spiced raisin and currant cake with wine, brandy, and citrus, baked at 300°F for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mollie S 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Stir in the raisins, currants, and citron.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the wine, brandy, eggs, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  6. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

  7. Add the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and baking soda dissolved in boiling water.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for 4 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.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense fruit batter together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water before adding it. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the batter; clumps can leave bitter pockets and uneven rising in a long bake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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