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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with flour, butter, sugar, almonds, raisins, citron, brandy, lemon, eggs, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Fruit 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the softened butter in a large bowl.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks until light, then gradually stir in the sugar, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, and creamed butter.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Alternately add the beaten egg whites and sifted flour to the butter mixture, reserving ½ cup of flour for the fruit.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in 1 teaspoon of boiling water and mix it into the batter.

  7. Stir in the brandy, lemon juice, and the reserved fruit.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 1.5 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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks enrich and bind the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through creaming with the sugar.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a tender, lightly aerated texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic lemon juice to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty texture that keeps the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that gives lift; alternating them with flour and stirring too hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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