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Dessert

Little Fruit Cakes

A small cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, spices, flour, milk, raisins, and sliced citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Little Fruit Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together three-fourths cup butter and two cups sugar.

  2. Add three well beaten eggs, one-half teaspoon nutmeg, one-third teaspoon cloves, one-fourth teaspoon mace, one teaspoon all-spice.

  3. Mix, sift together with one teaspoon cream tartar and three cups flour.

  4. Dissolve three-fourths teaspoon soda in one cup milk.

  5. Add part of the flour to the egg mixture.

  6. Add the milk and the remainder of the flour.

  7. Dredge with the flour one cup sliced citron and two cups seeded raisins and add to the batter.

Bake

  1. Bake in small tins in moderate oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

965Calories
29 gProtein
33 gFat
139 gCarbs

Counts 9 of 10 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the crumb tenderness and a moist texture.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with the soda to aid leavening and a lighter crumb.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness, chewiness and moisture to the finished cake.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, clove, cream, milk, egg, flour. 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.

More fruit cake recipes

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

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