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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, nuts, spices, butter, sour milk, and brown sugar, baked slowly and stored for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the seeded and seedless raisins, almonds, walnuts, butter, sour milk or cream, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the eggs, orange peel, citron, baking soda dissolved in milk, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace. Mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour. Stir until combined.

Bake and store

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 3 hours in the preheated oven.

  3. Store in a covered stone crock to keep for months.

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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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 batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper flavour to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk or cream to help the cake rise.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, almond, walnut, butter, milk, sugar, 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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