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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, egg whites, baking powder, raisins, figs, almonds, citron, lemon extract, and optional coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White 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. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  4. Incorporate the egg whites and lemon extract, mixing until smooth.

  5. Sift a little flour over the chopped fruit and nuts, then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours, checking for doneness with a skewer.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 flavour.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the egg whites and baking powder lift the batter.
Whites of 7 eggs
Add structure and lift to the batter, helping the cake rise and set when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cake rise and become airy.
Figs
Add moisture and sweetness to the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding the fruit and nuts into the batter. Dusting the chopped fruit and nuts with flour helps keep them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom. Folding gently preserves the air already in the batter, so the cake rises evenly.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg, raisin, 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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