Skip to main content
Baking

Wine Cake

A cake made by boiling wine with sugar, cooling, mixing with eggs and flour, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Wine Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the wine and sugar until boiling.

  2. Let it cool to blood temperature.

  3. Pour the wine mixture over the beaten eggs.

  4. Stir in the flour and mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Wine + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Beaten eggs provide structure as they set, giving the cake its body.
Flour
Forms the gluten network and starch that set the crumb and hold the cake together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds moisture to the batter.
Wine
Supplies liquid and flavor, moistening the batter and adding aroma.

The step that matters

Let the wine mixture cool to blood temperature. Pouring boiling liquid onto beaten eggs can scramble them, so cooling it first keeps the eggs smooth and lets the batter combine evenly.

“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.

More wine cake recipes

Raisin 5 See all 17 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes