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Dessert

Christmas Cake Recipe

A dense, spiced fruit cake made with raisins, currants, peel, dates, almonds, and spices, baked at 300°F until done.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Christmas Cake Recipe

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).

  2. In a bowl, mix the raisins, currants, peel, dates, yellow sugar, almonds, flour, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, cream the butter and add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it to the mixture just before adding the fruit.

  3. Combine the fruit mixture with the butter and egg mixture, stirring until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for three hours or more, until a toothpick 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Yellow sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown during baking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the dense, fruit-packed crumb.

The step that matters

Bake until the center is fully set. A dense batter packed with fruit and sugar needs long, low heat so the center cooks through before the outside over-browns. Testing the center with a toothpick confirms it is set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, dates, sugar, almond, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, dates, sugar, almond, flour, 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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