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Dessert

Black or 'Wedding Cake

A spiced cake with currants, raisins, citron, and brandy.

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 powdered 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, stir 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 cake cool before icing it 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
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and give structure as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps aerate the batter and adds sweetness and fine texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the eggs and butter bake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol adds a little moisture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake lift. Folding gently and alternating with flour keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake rises and stays light.

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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