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Dessert

White Wedding Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, egg whites, citron, almonds, coconut, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

White Wedding 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and egg whites together until smooth.

  2. Add the milk, Magic Baking Powder, and sifted flour. Stir well.

  3. Fold in the citron, almonds, and grated coconut until just mixed.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and white wine.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, ice heavily with a mixture of confectioners' sugar and egg white.

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the egg whites to form a smooth, rich, tender base.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air that lightens the batter and helps the cake rise.
Magic baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Almonds
Add richness, fat, and texture through the batter.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. The air trapped in beaten whites is what lifts the cake. Stirring vigorously deflates them, which leads to a dense, heavy crumb instead of a light one.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, almond, white wine. 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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