Skip to main content

Fruit Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 252 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Use any desired fruit such as cherries, pears, or grapes.

  2. If using sour fruits, add more sugar.

  3. Pour custard over the cake last, if desired.

  4. For a non-custard version, sprinkle almonds, currants, orange peel, and citron peel on top before baking.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Pear + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pear + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Grape + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, grape, sugar, almond, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, grape, sugar, almond, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes