Name: Egoless Fruit Cake
Ingredients: two cups brown sugar; 2 cups water; 4 cups raisins; 4 cups of flour; a pinch of salt; salt

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egoless Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine two cups brown sugar, a heaping tablespoonful lard, a teaspoonful cinnamon, two cups water, four cups raisins, and a teaspoonful cloves; boil all together for three minutes.
When cool, add a teaspoon soda dissolved in hot water, four cups flour, a teaspoonful baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

Bake

Bake in a slow oven for one hour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

566Calories

14 gProtein

2 gFat

124 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Grape	1/2 cup (76g)	62
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Water	not in our table	0

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

By New Orleans Federation of Clubs. 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Raisins: Add moisture and sweetness, and make up most of the fruit body of the cake.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
Baking soda (in the method): Reacts with the hot water and acidity in the mix to help the cake rise.
Baking powder (in the method): Releases gas during baking to give the cake lift.

The step that matters

Boiling the fruit mixture. Boiling the sugar, fat, water and raisins softens the fruit and dissolves the sugar before the flour goes in. Adding the soda only once the mixture has cooled keeps it from reacting too quickly and losing its lift.

“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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Egoless Fruit Cake