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Dessert

Lovers' Wedding Cake

A cake made with flour, butter, sugar, nuts or dried fruit, honey or syrup, applesauce, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, lemon juice, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lovers' 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine 4 pounds of flour, ½ pound of sugar, and ½ pound of chopped nuts or dried fruit.

  2. In another bowl, cream together ½ pound of softened butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Mix in ½ pound of honey or syrup, ½ pound of applesauce, ½ pound of powdered sugar, and 1 ounce of cocoa powder until well combined.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix well.

  5. Stir in 1 cup of milk and ⅓ cup of water until the batter is smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Honey + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cocoa powdertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,244 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake batter.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and creaming traps air for a lighter crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Cocoa powder
Adds chocolate flavor and dark color.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter until light and fluffy. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which helps the cake rise and gives a lighter, more tender crumb. Butter that is too cold or too warm will not trap air well.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, nuts, honey, cocoa powder, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, nuts, honey, cocoa powder, 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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