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Dessert

Parisian Cake

A brioche-based cake flavored with maraschino liqueur and heavy cream, baked until light.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Parisian Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Prepare a brioche sponge and let it rise.

  2. On a clean surface, form a well with the flour and add salt, sugar, a little water, butter, and eggs. Mix thoroughly, then add the sponge, maraschino, and whipped cream.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered mold and let it rise in a cool place.

  2. Once it has risen nearly to the top, wrap a band of paper around the edge.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until light in color.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, optionally pouring maraschino into a hole made in the center or layering with apricot marmalade.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with eggs and butter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich crumb.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and flavour that carries through the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the mold rise nearly to the top. The dough needs to rise enough before baking so the cake turns out light. Stopping too early leaves it dense, while waiting too long can cause it to collapse in the oven.

“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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