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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with egg whites, powdered sugar, flour, butter, sweet cream, baking soda, baking powder, almonds, citron, coconut, rose water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Almond and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

White Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites in a large bowl until stiff peaks form.

  3. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together in another bowl until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the sweet cream, baking soda, and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

  6. Flavor the batter with vanilla or your choice of flavoring.

Add the almonds and fruit

  1. Beat the sweet and bitter almonds with a little rose water in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Fold the almond mixture, citron, and grated coconut into the batter.

  3. Lightly flour the fruits with a small portion of the flour from the recipe.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake slowly 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy crumb to the cake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the batter and helps give a fine, even crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sweet almonds
Add moisture, richness and a nutty flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and test for doneness. A low oven lets the thick, fruit-filled batter cook through evenly without the outside setting or browning too fast. Testing with a toothpick in the center confirms the middle is set before removing the cake.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, cream, almond, rose. 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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