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Baking

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, butter, flour, dark sugar, raisins, currants, almonds, lemon peel, spices, baking soda, and liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  4. Stir in the lemon peel, almonds, raisins, and currants.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in the liquor and add it to the mixture.

  6. Incorporate the cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  7. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or 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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Dark sugar
Creams with the butter and adds moisture, sweetness and deep molasses flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the liquor's acidity to help the cake rise and brown.
Raisins
Add chewy moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour. Adding flour gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the batter from overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, raisin, lemon, almond, butter, cinnamon. 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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