Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, brandy, wine, raisins, currants, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in the sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter alternately with the flour.

  5. Season the batter with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, brandy, and wine. Mix well, then fold in the raisins, currants, and almonds.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Dust the fruit with about 4 cups of flour to prevent sinking.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a lighter structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Sugar
Creaming with butter adds sweetness and helps create a light, fluffy batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dust the fruit with flour. Fruit is heavy and sinks toward the bottom of a rich batter during baking. A light coating of flour helps the pieces grip the batter and stay suspended as it sets.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes