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Dessert

Bride or Wedding Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake flavored with mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, and currants, sweetened with loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bride or Wedding 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 the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites well.

  3. Strain the eggs, yeast, and a little warm water into the flour.

  4. Add the cold butter, broken into small bits, and mix well.

  5. Knead the mixture with scalding hot water until well combined.

  6. Cover the dough with a warm cloth and let it rise near the fire for about 15 minutes.

Add the currants and bake

  1. Prepare the currants by drying them and mixing with musk and ambergris dissolved in rose water.

  2. Layer the dough and currants alternately in a baking pan until well mixed, being careful not to break the currants.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the main body of the dough.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough together.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the crumb.
Ale yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Currants
Add sweetness, moisture, and fruity flavor throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Layer the dough and currants gently. Overworking or crushing the currants releases their juices and dark color into the dough, making it streaky and wet. Keeping them whole preserves texture and an even crumb.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, egg, rose):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, egg, rose. 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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