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Dessert

Bride Cake

A large cake made with flour, butter, currants, plums or sultanas, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bride Cake

Why it works: Currant and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bride 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour and mix until combined.

  3. Fold in the currants and plums or sultanas.

  4. Add spices to taste and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours or until a skewer inserted 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + plumtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Fine flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it traps air that lightens the crumb.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter become light and fluffy.
Currants
Add fruit moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.
Plums or sultanas
Add fruit moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour and mix until combined. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the batter from becoming overworked. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, plum, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, plum, 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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