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Dessert

Brides Cake

A spiced fruit cake with raisins, currants, candied fruit, almonds, spices, and brandy, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Brides Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift the pastry flour twice.

  2. Seed and finely chop the raisins and currants.

  3. Blanch the almonds, then cut them into long strips.

  4. Finely chop the candied citron, orange peel, and lemon peel.

  5. Grate the rind of the orange and lemon.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, then gradually sift in the powdered sugar and beat until creamy and light.

  2. Break two eggs at a time into the mixture, beating until incorporated.

  3. If it curdles, add some flour.

  4. Gradually add the remaining flour, salt, allspice, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon, beating well.

  5. Stir in the floured fruit, grated rinds, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a lined circular cake pan and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours, checking to avoid 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift through their proteins and trapped air.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit-filled cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and helps keep the cake moist.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs should be added two at a time and beaten in fully. If the mixture curdles, the emulsion has broken, and a little flour helps restore a smooth, stable batter that will rise evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, butter, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, butter, sugar. 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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