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Dessert

Rich Fruit or Wedding Cake

A dense, buttery cake studded with currants, raisins, mixed peel, almonds, and spices, flavored with orange and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Rich Fruit or Wedding 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

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Stir in the grated orange rind and juice.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the currants, sultana raisins, layer raisins, mixed peel, and mixed almonds with ½ of the flour.

  2. In another bowl, mix the remaining flour with the baking soda, nutmeg, mace, and spice.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the brandy and sour cream.

  4. Fold in the fruit and nut mixture until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for 2 to 3 hours or until a skewer inserted in the center 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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  5. Currant + raisintop 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.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter bakes and sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to help the cake rise.
Currants
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a tender, browned crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with the brandy and sour cream. Adding the flour in portions alternated with liquids keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Adding everything at once or overmixing can make the cake dense or tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

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