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Dessert

Layer Fruit-cake

Layered fruit cake with raisins and dates, topped with a sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Layer 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.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  4. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake until golden.

Make the icing and filling

  1. For the icing, boil the pint of sugar with enough water to melt it until it forms a thick syrup.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup into the beaten egg whites while stirring rapidly until smooth.

  3. Stir the raisins and chop the dates into small pieces, then mix them together.

Assemble and ice

  1. Spread a thick layer of icing on one cake layer, top with fruit, add more icing, and place another layer of cake on top.

  2. Ice the entire cake with the remaining icing.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the cake and icing a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, boiled into syrup, forms the thick icing.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the fruit filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be added slowly while stirring rapidly. Pouring too fast can cook or deflate the whipped whites unevenly, leaving the icing lumpy or runny instead of smooth and glossy.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, milk, flour, 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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