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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A sponge cake soaked in wine, brandy, or rum, decorated with sliced almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and rum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake a sponge cake in a mold shaped like a porcupine or other animal.

Decorate and serve

  1. Blanch and split the sweet almonds lengthwise.

  2. Stick the almonds all over the back of the sponge cake to represent quills.

  3. Place the cake in an oval glass dish.

  4. Pour enough wine around the cake to absorb it, adding brandy and rum if desired.

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. Sherry + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  5. Almond + rumtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 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

Sponge cake
Forms the structure that soaks up the wine and holds its shape.
Sweet almonds
Decorative quills that add a mild, nutty flavor to the cake.
Madeira or sherry
Adds moisture and aroma as the cake absorbs the wine.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, brandy, rum. 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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