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Dessert

Vienna Cake

A ring-shaped cake made with flour, sugar, lard, baking soda, cream of tartar, and iced with common icing and colored sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Vienna Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make a dough with 2 lbs. of flour and enough water.

  3. Grease a baking tin and place the 12 sandwich rings on it.

  4. Divide the dough into twelve parts, roll each into a circle the size of the rings, and line the bottom and sides of the rings with the dough.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix 3 lbs. of flour, 1½ lbs. of sugar, 6 oz. of lard, 1 oz. of baking soda, and 2 oz. of cream of tartar to create a soft batter.

  2. Pour the batter into the lined rings.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. Once cooled, ice the cakes with common icing and sprinkle colored sugar on top.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the dough shell and the batter, giving the cakes their structure as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Lard
Adds fat, giving the batter a tender, moist crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that works with the baking soda to lift the batter and balance flavor.

“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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