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Dessert

Birthday Cake

A rich cake made with flour, butter, eggs, sugar, candied peel, almonds, currants, and brandy, finished with almond paste and sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Birthday Cake

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them alternately with the sifted flour to the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Mix in the remaining ingredients thoroughly.

  5. Pour the batter into a mold lined with buttered paper.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for three hours, reducing the heat after the first hour to finish baking slowly.

  2. Allow the cake to cool, then cover it with almond paste about ½ inch thick.

  3. If desired, cut the cake in half and add ½ inch of almond paste between the layers.

  4. Cover the cake with sugar icing and let it set in a warm place until firm.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture as they bind the batter and set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
Caster sugar
Creams with butter to aerate the batter and adds sweetness and tenderness.
Ground almonds
Add moisture and a dense, tender texture along with nutty flavour.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking at a reduced heat after the first hour. A long bake at high heat can scorch the outside before the centre sets. Lowering the heat lets the dense batter cook through evenly without over-browning.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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