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Dessert

Tipsy Cake

A cake soaked in sweet wine or sherry and brandy, topped with almonds and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Use a cake that is 3 to 4 days old, either sponge or Savoy.

  2. Cut the bottom of the cake level to make it stand firm in the dish.

  3. Make a small hole in the center and pour in enough sweet wine or sherry mixed with brandy to soak it nicely.

Decorate and serve

  1. Once the cake is well soaked, blanch and cut the almonds into strips and stick them all over the cake.

  2. Lift the cake and pour a good custard around it, made with 8 eggs instead of 6 to the pint of milk.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Brandy + almondtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

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

  3. Wine + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,260 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

Sponge or savoy cake
Provides the porous crumb that absorbs the wine and brandy and holds its shape.
Sweet wine or sherry
Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and sweetness.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warming flavour to the soaking liquid.
Eggs (in the method)
Set the custard, giving it structure and a rich texture.
Custard
Adds moisture and richness around the cake.

The step that matters

Soaking the cake. Pour the wine and brandy slowly into the central hole so the cake absorbs it evenly. A dry or overly dense cake will not take up the liquid well, and pouring too fast can make the cake soggy in places while leaving others dry.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, 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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