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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, figs, almonds, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and mace.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.

Bake

  1. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, figs, and sliced almonds.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  3. Bake for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

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 richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mixing only until just combined keeps the batter from becoming tough, because overworked flour develops gluten that makes the crumb dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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