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Dessert

Vienna Cake

A layered cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, jam, jelly, and topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Vienna Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat together flour, butter, sifted loaf sugar, and egg yolks for 45 minutes.

  3. Whip the egg whites until frothy and gradually mix into the batter until soft and light.

  4. Cut paper to fit the baking dish and spread the batter on it.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in the oven until just set, not browned.

  2. Spread jam and jelly between layers of cake.

  3. Let the cake cool completely.

Top and finish

  1. Mix additional sugar with the egg whites and pour over the top.

  2. Decorate with preserved orange and lemon chips and colored sugar-plums.

  3. Place in a cool oven to dry.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + plumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sifted loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, light texture when beaten.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while setting.
Egg whites
Whipped for air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.

The step that matters

Bake until just set, not browned. Overbaking dries out the delicate, airy batter and can brown the surface too far. Pulling it once just set keeps the crumb soft and moist for the layers.

Swap the plum

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

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

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