Name: Tipsy Cake
Ingredients: 1 sponge cake; ½ cup Madeira, sherry, or other strong white wine; sweet almonds; oil or oiled butter; 1 pint flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; water; 2 egg yolks

Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

Bake a sponge cake in a mold shaped like a porcupine.
Blanch and split sweet almonds lengthwise.

Assemble and serve

Stick the almonds all over the back of the sponge cake to represent quills.
Place the cake in an oval glass dish.
Pour enough wine around the cake to absorb it, adding brandy and rum if 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.

Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sherry + almondtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together517 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and flour 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

Sponge cake: Forms the base of the dish and soaks up the wine as its moist body.
Madeira, sherry, or other strong white wine: Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and a sweet, fortified flavour.
Sweet almonds: Decorative quills stuck into the cake, adding a nutty flavour and crunch.

“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.