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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

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

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

  3. In a separate bowl, dredge the raisins, currants, and citron in half of the flour.

  4. Combine the dredged fruit with the butter mixture.

  5. In another bowl, mix the remaining flour with mace, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  6. Add the flour mixture to the fruit mixture, along with the lemon or rose extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper caramel flavor to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruity sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit in flour. Coating the raisins, currants, and citron in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, raisin, currant, cinnamon, clove. 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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