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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A sponge cake soaked in wine and brandy, topped with custard and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the bottom of the cake level to make it stand firm in the dish.

  2. Make a small hole in the center and pour in the sweet wine or sherry mixed with brandy to soak the cake.

Decorate and serve

  1. Once soaked, blanch the almonds.

  2. Cut the blanched almonds into strips.

  3. Stick the almond strips all over the cake.

  4. Pour the custard around the cake.

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

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

  2. Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Wine + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge or savoy cake
Provides the soft, absorbent base that soaks up the wine and brandy.
Sweet wine or sherry
Moistens the cake and adds sweetness and aroma.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the soaking liquid.
Sweet almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor as a decoration.
Rich custard
Adds moisture, richness and creaminess around the cake.

The step that matters

Soaking the cake. The cake must be old enough to hold its shape and firm enough at the base to stand in the dish. Pour the liquor slowly into the center so it is absorbed evenly rather than pooling or soaking only the top, which would leave the cake soggy in places and dry in others.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, brandy):

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, brandy. 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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