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Dessert

Black or Wedding Cake

A spiced cake with currants, raisins, citron, and brandy, baked for at least two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Black or Wedding Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in half of the flour.

  4. Add the spices, then fold in the whipped egg whites alternately with the remaining flour.

  5. Finally, mix in the brandy.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into deep tins lined with well buttered paper.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for at least two hours.

  3. Let the cakes cool completely before icing them thickly.

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

Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter, while the yolks add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and, when creamed with butter, helps create a light, aerated texture.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavor and moisture to the dense batter.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the cake and is stirred in at the end of mixing.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the batter rise, so they must be folded gently and alternately with the flour to avoid deflating the mixture and producing a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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