Skip to main content
Dessert

Economical Fruit Cake.

A no-egg fruit cake made with raisins, sugar, spices, and lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Economical 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).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, raisins, salt, cinnamon, ground nut meats, water, and lard or butter.

  2. Mix in grated nutmeg, ground clover, and chopped citron.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted 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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness, and hold moisture in the cake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning as the cake bakes.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and moistness in the crumb.
Ground nut meats
Add body, richness and a nutty flavour to the cake.
Water
Moistens the batter so the dry ingredients hydrate and the cake bakes through.

The step that matters

Check for doneness with a toothpick. Without eggs to set the crumb, the cake relies on starch and sugar setting during baking, so underbaking leaves it gummy in the centre. Test the middle and bake until the toothpick comes out clean.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, meat, butter, 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes