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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A cake soaked in sherry or orange wine, brandy, custard, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cake

  1. Mix the sherry and brandy.

  2. Make a few holes in the cake with a skewer and pour the liquor over it.

  3. Let the cake soak thoroughly, pouring the wine over it as it runs off.

Finish the cake

  1. Stick the blanched and divided almonds into the cake.

  2. Pour the custard over 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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sherry or orange wine
Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and a boozy, fruity flavour.
Brandy
Adds a strong aroma and flavour to the soaking liquor.
Custard
Adds a rich, creamy layer that moistens the cake's surface.
Sweet almonds
Add a nutty flavour and crunchy texture on top of the cake.

The step that matters

Let the cake soak thoroughly. A stale cake is dry and dense, so it needs time to absorb the liquor evenly. Pouring the wine over it as it runs off helps it take up more liquid and stay moist.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, 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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