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Dessert

Plain Fruit Cake

A spiced fruit cake made with raisins, spices, and a beaten egg white fold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. Sift and gradually add the flour mixed with baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  5. Mix in the chopped raisins coated with a little flour.

  6. Slice citron into the batter if desired.

  7. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the batter.

  8. If the batter is not stiff enough, add a little more flour.

Bake

  1. Grease the baking tins and line the bottoms with greased white paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) until done.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten to stiff peaks, give the cake lift and an airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the fruit cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that leavens the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leads to a dense cake.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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