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Dessert

English Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, spices, wine, and brandy, baked slowly for hours.

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 ↓

English Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and flour

  1. Dry, sift, and weigh the flour.

  2. Wash the currants until free from grit; lift them from the water and dry carefully in the oven.

  3. Seed the raisins, cover with just enough water, and boil until dry without scorching; cool.

  4. Dredge a handful of the weighed flour over the raisins and currants.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together; add the yolks of the eggs and then the spices.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a foam; alternate adding flour and egg whites until fully combined.

  3. Mix in the wine and brandy thoroughly, then add the fruit in layers.

Bake and keep

  1. Bake in a large 8-quart pan lined with buttered paper for 4 hours.

  2. Start with a steady fire, heating through the first hour; then stir the fire a little.

  3. Cover the cake with paper and bake steadily for 2 hours; during the last hour, bake very slowly.

  4. Prepare everything the day before and cut with a very sharp knife.

  5. The cake is best a week or two old.

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. 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to form a structure that traps air and gives a tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add moisture and tart fruit flavour distributed through the cake.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Baking the long, slow bake. The cake is dense and heavily fruited, so it needs a steady, gentle heat for hours. A fire that runs too hot can scorch the outside before the centre sets, and the slow final hour helps it finish cooking evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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