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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A rich, spiced cake with raisins, currants, and spices baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Wedding 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 and add the sugar.

  2. Mix in the molasses, lemon juice, and spices.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and beat well.

  4. Sift the flour with baking soda and add it to the mixture.

  5. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites thoroughly.

  6. Flour the fruit and add it last.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours or longer if needed.

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. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whites, folded in, add lift and a light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to help the cake rise and darken.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep colour and a caramel-like flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the heavy batter lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake bakes lighter.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, molasses, clove, raisin. 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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