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Dessert

Wedding Cake

A large cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, wine, brandy, nutmeg, raisins, currants, and citron, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone the raisins.

  2. Wash and dry the currants.

  3. Cut the citron into small pieces.

  4. Mix the raisins, currants, and citron with 1 cup of flour to coat.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add the flour, then the wine and brandy, and finally the nutmeg.

  4. Fold in the floured fruit mixture.

Bake

  1. Line a large cake pan with buttered paper. Wrap another layer of paper around the outside, securing it with twine.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

  3. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  4. Bake for about three 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Baking the batter slowly for about three hours. A large, dense batter needs low, steady heat so the centre sets and cooks through before the outside darkens or dries out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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