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Dessert

Bride Cake

A rich almond cake flavored with spices, brandy, sherry, and currants, finished with almond and sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bride Cake

Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bride Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Bruise the sweet almonds with a little orange‑flower water.

  2. Powder the mace, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Wash the butter.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large basin.

  2. Gradually mix in the sifted sugar while stirring constantly.

  3. Add the frothed egg whites.

  4. Heat with the yolks.

  5. Incorporate the almonds, spices, and flour until blended. Beat well.

  6. Gradually add the currants.

  7. Smooth the mixture with brandy and sherry.

Bake and ice

  1. Line a baking tin with buttered double paper.

  2. Fill it three‑quarters full.

  3. Cover with paper.

  4. Bake for about 5 hours at 400°F (200°C).

  5. Once baked, cover with almond icing.

  6. Allow to dry.

  7. Add sugar icing.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to build a rich, tender crumb and carry the flavour.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift when frothed, and yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sweet almonds
Add body, moisture and nutty flavour to the crumb.
Currants
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chew through the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the sifted sugar while stirring constantly. Adding sugar slowly while creaming with butter lets the mixture hold air. Adding it all at once can cause the batter to separate or turn dense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, brandy, sherry, almond, cinnamon. 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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