Name: Wedding or Brides Cake
Ingredients: 1 lb butter; 1 lb castor sugar; 1 lb flour; 4 eggs; ⅓ cup brandy; 1 lb currants; ½ lb sultanas; 1 teaspoon mixed spice; Grated rind of 2 lemons; 4 lb candied cherries; 4 lb mixed candied orange, lemon, and citron peel; ½ lb stoned Valencia raisins, slightly chopped; ½ lb chopped almonds; Almond paste (for covering); Royal icing (for decorating)

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Butter: Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour: Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Castor sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.
Currants: Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the fruit cake.
Candied cherries: Add sweetness, colour and moist pockets of fruit flavour through the cake.

The step that matters

Baking low and slow. A long, low bake at 300°F lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through evenly without the outside burning or the centre remaining raw. Checking doneness with a skewer before cooling helps prevent a gummy middle.

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Blackberryfits better
Currantthe original

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

Wedding or Brides Cake