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Dessert

Substitute for Fruit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with raisins, nuts, applesauce, and pastry flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Substitute for Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 375°F (190°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the Crisco and brown sugar together.

  2. Gradually add the beaten egg and apple sauce, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the pastry flour, baking powder, salt, nuts, and raisins.

  4. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients until well combined.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 375°F (190°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. If the cake is too moist, dry it out in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 8-10 minutes.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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

Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Crisco or snowdrift
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel-like flavor.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and natural sweetness in place of much of the fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry and wet ingredients. Stirring only until combined keeps the batter tender, since overmixing develops gluten in the flour and makes the cake tough and dense.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, nuts, sugar, egg. 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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