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Dessert

Dessert Sandwich

A sweet cake sandwich made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, brandy, and apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dessert Sandwich

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make and bake the cakes

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and flour alternately, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the lemon rind, baking powder, brandy, and 2‑3 tablespoons of milk.

  4. Pour half the mixture into a well‑greased square sandwich tin.

  5. Color the remaining mixture pink with carmine and pour it into another greased tin of the same size.

  6. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once cooled, cut each cake into nine strips to make two blocks.

  2. Assemble the strips in threes using apricot jam to stick them together, ensuring no two colors are adjacent.

  3. Make almond paste and roll it out to cover each block.

  4. Cut the cake into slices for serving.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Brandy + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake crumb once baked.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming aerates the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cake rises and stays light.
Apricot jam
Glues the cake strips together and adds fruity sweetness and moisture.

The step that matters

Assemble the strips in threes with no two colors adjacent. Cakes must be fully cooled before cutting, or they crumble and smear. Keeping the pink and plain strips alternating depends on accurate, clean cuts, and the jam holds the pattern together.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, milk, brandy, apricot. 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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