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Dessert

Iced Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, currants, sugar, mace, cloves, almonds, butter, eggs, mixed peel, and baking soda, iced after baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Iced 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.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and split the almonds.

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

Make the batter

  1. Warm the butter in a clean bowl, add the sugar, and beat until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Add the other ingredients and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased and paper-lined round cake tin.

Bake and ice

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. When cold, cover with white icing and decorate as 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb when beaten with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a creamy, aerated batter when beaten with butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise and brown.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the butter and sugar mixture. Adding them too quickly can cause curdling, which weakens the batter's structure and volume.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, sugar, clove, almond, butter, egg. 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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