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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) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Little Fruit Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, nutmeg, cloves, mace, and allspice.

  3. Sift together the cream of tartar and flour.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  5. Mix part of the flour into the egg mixture, then add the milk and the remaining flour.

  6. Dredge the sliced citron and raisins with flour, then fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Bake in small tins in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat creamed with the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and milk to help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Folding in the citron and raisins. Dredging the fruit in flour helps keep it suspended in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom. Folding gently avoids deflating the batter and overworking the flour.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, clove, allspice, cream. 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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