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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A Savoy cake soaked in white wine, topped with custard, cream, and sliced Jordan almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,760 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Place the Savoy cake in the serving dish.

  2. Pour 1 pint of white wine over the cake, allowing it to soak up as much as possible.

Decorate with almonds

  1. Blanch the Jordan almonds.

  2. Slice the blanched almonds lengthwise.

  3. Insert the sliced almonds into the cake.

Finish with custard and cream

  1. Pour custard around the cake in the dish.

  2. Whip the cream.

  3. Spoon the froth on top of the custard.

  4. Add a few spoonfuls of jam instead.

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. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. White wine + almondtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy cake
Forms the sponge base that soaks up the wine and holds the dish together.
White wine
Moistens the sponge and adds flavour as it soaks in.
Jordan almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour as sliced decoration.
Custard
Adds a soft, creamy sauce that surrounds the cake.
Cream
Whipped into a light froth that tops the custard, adding richness and lightness.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, cream):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, cream. 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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