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Dessert

Nut or Fruit Cake Slice

A sweet cake slice made from sugar, glucose, water, ground nut meats or French fruits, coated with bon bon cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nut or Fruit Cake Slice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, glucose, and water, then cook until the mixture reaches 244°F (118°C).

  2. Pour the cooked mixture onto a damp slab and sprinkle with ground nut meats or assorted French fruits.

  3. Cream the mixture until smooth, then form it into round loaves about 10 inches long and 4 inches in diameter.

  4. Let the loaves set until cold.

Coat and serve

  1. Melt the bon bon cream and color it pink or chocolate.

  2. Coat each roll with the melted cream as smoothly as possible.

  3. Cut into slices for serving.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,248 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Sugar + meattop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet, firm body of the candy as it cooks and sets.
Glucose
Inhibits crystallization, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Ground nut meats or assorted french fruits
Provide flavor and texture as the filling pieces within the set mass.
Bon bon cream
Forms a smooth outer coating that sets over each loaf.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar syrup to 244°F (118°C). Cooking to this temperature sets the sugar concentration so the mass firms up when cold. Undercooked syrup stays soft and sticky, while overcooked syrup becomes hard and brittle.

“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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