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Dessert

Wedding or Birthday Cake

A citrus and fruit cake with lemon, orange, citron, cherries, currants, almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Wedding or Birthday Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the lemon peel, orange peel, citron, glace cherries, and ground almonds; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, mixed spice, and salt.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the butter mixture, then gradually add the flour mixture.

  5. Stir in the brandy, grated lemon rind, and currants until evenly combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a skewer 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and nuts within the cake.
Ground almonds
Add moisture and a dense, tender texture to the crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture gently. Once flour is mixed with the wet ingredients, gluten begins to form, so overmixing or adding the flour too fast can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, lemon, almond, flour, egg, brandy):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon, almond, flour, egg, 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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