Skip to main content
Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, citron, blanched almonds, sliced coconut, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Coconut and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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 and mix

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, citron, blanched almonds, and sliced coconut.

  3. Add vanilla extract to taste and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for several hours until cooked through.

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. Coconut + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Blanched almonds
Provide crunch and richness to the dense, chewy batter.
Sliced coconut
Adds chewy texture and helps keep the cake moist.
Citron
Contributes sweet, tangy fruit flavor and a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. A dense batter packed with fruit and nuts needs a long, moderate bake so heat reaches the center. Pulling it early leaves a raw middle, while higher heat would scorch the outside first.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, coconut, vanilla):

  1. Macadamia nutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Brazil nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, coconut, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes