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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with flour, butter, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, spices, eggs, brandy, wine, and rose-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit 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 the fruit

  1. Wash the currants thoroughly and let them dry, then rub a little flour through them.

  2. Seed the raisins, cut them fine, and flour them.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, then stir in the flour and eggs alternately.

  2. Mix the spices, brandy, wine, and rose-water together, and add gradually to the cake mixture.

  3. Stir in the currants and raisins alternately with the spices and liquor.

  4. Put a layer of butter and citron in the mixture each time.

Bake

  1. Line the bottom of the pan with double paper and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for six hours.

  2. If the stove is not needed, leave the cake in the oven until cold.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and lift as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through creaming with the sugar.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit flavor throughout the cake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and flour alternately. Adding flour and eggs in alternating portions helps the batter emulsify and stay smooth, so the cake bakes evenly without curdling or becoming dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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