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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A sponge cake soaked in wine or sherry, brandy, custard, topped with almonds and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the stale sponge cake and arrange it in a serving dish.

  2. Soak the cake with sweet wine or sherry.

  3. Mix the brandy with the soaked cake.

  4. Chop the sweet almonds and sprinkle them over the cake.

  5. Pour the custard over the cake and let it soak for a while.

  6. Top with whipped cream before serving.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  3. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale sponge cake
Forms the base layer that soaks up the wine, brandy and custard.
Sweet wine or sherry
Moistens the cake and adds sweetness and flavour.
Brandy
Adds a strong aroma and warming flavour to the soaked cake.
Custard
Adds moisture and a soft, creamy texture as it soaks into the cake.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, rich topping that contrasts with the soaked cake.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the cake and let it soak for a while. The cake must be moist enough to absorb the custard evenly without becoming soggy. Stale sponge has a drier crumb that soaks up liquid gradually, so letting it rest lets the custard distribute through the layers before serving.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, brandy, cream. 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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