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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually beat in the powdered sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and then the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  3. Mix in the browned flour, raisins, currants, and citron.

  4. Stir in the spices and brandy, beating thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about five hours.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff to add lightness and help the cake rise during baking.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture and help bind the batter.
Browned flour
Provides the structure of the cake along with a toasty, caramel flavour.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruity sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten properly, and folding them in gently keeps that trapped air in the batter, which helps the cake rise and become light rather than dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, flour, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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