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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, egg whites, vanilla, citron, lemon peel, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the water and mix well.

  3. Combine the flour and baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the water.

  5. Stir in the vanilla or almond extract.

  6. Fold in the floured fruit.

  7. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a large tube cake pan lined with oiled paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  3. Frost if desired.

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.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air that expands in the oven, lifting and lightening the cake.
Large raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, and their chewiness contrasts with the crumb.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Stirring vigorously deflates them, which leaves a denser cake with less rise.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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