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Baking

Christmas Cake

A dense fruit cake baked at 300°F with butter, sugar, eggs, cream, syrup, coffee, raisins, currants, dates, almonds, peel, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Christmas Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs, cream, syrup, and coffee; mix well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, dates, almonds, peel, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the flour until the mixture is stiff enough to hold a spoon.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake for 3 hours.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure, which stiffens as it is added to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with the butter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon juice and syrup to lift the batter as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour. Adding flour too quickly can overwork the batter and make it dense. Stopping when the mixture is stiff enough to hold a spoon keeps the crumb tender while the fruit stays evenly suspended.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, cream, syrup, coffee, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cream, syrup, coffee, 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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