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Bread

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, egg whites, raisins, citron, figs, almonds, coconut, lemon extract, baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

White Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put baking powder into the flour and mix it well before adding it to the other ingredients.

  2. Sift a little flour over the fruit before stirring it in.

Mix the cake

  1. Combine butter, sugar, sweet milk, two and one-half cups of flour, egg whites, baking powder, raisins, figs, blanched almonds, and chopped citron.

  2. Mix thoroughly before adding the fruit; add a teaspoonful of lemon extract.

  3. Add a cup of grated coconut as a nice addition to the cake.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly for two hours, testing with a splint to see when it is done.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

907Calories
29 gProtein
26 gFat
140 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 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
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cakenot 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.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning during baking.
Eggs
Provide structure and help the cake set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lifts the batter so the cake rises.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and test with a splint. Baking slowly lets the centre of this dense, fruit-filled cake cook through before the outside over-browns. Testing with a splint shows when the centre is set, since the cake is too heavy to judge by colour alone.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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