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Dessert

Tar Heel Fruit Cake

A fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, raisins, currants, citron, orange peel, almonds, brandy, and allspice.

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 ↓

Tar Heel Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and pulverized sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour, then fold in the raisins, currants, citron, orange peel, and chopped almonds.

  4. Mix in the brandy and allspice until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for several hours until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as the cake bakes and sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter and fruit together as it sets.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated tart-sweet fruit flavor throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol helps keep the cake moist.

The step that matters

Baking until a toothpick comes out clean. A cake this dense with fruit can look set outside while the center is still wet. Testing the center with a toothpick confirms the batter has fully set before cooling.

Swap the currant

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

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

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