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Dessert

Directions for Making Fruit Cakes

A baked cake made with dried fruit, wine, almonds, rosewater, spices, cordial, jelly, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate, nuts, and paper lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Directions for Making Fruit Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the dried fruit a day in advance and soak it in wine or grape juice.

  2. Blanch and grind the almonds, then mix with rosewater.

  3. Measure spices and mix with cordial and jelly; do not stir after adding jelly.

  4. Brown the flour in the oven, then cool and measure it.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with half the sugar, then beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar until light.

  2. Combine the creamed butter with the egg yolk mixture, then add the cordial, jelly, and spices.

  3. Alternately add the beaten egg whites and half of the flour, then mix in the melted chocolate.

  4. Sift flour over the top layer of fruit, then fold into the batter, repeating until all fruit is added.

  5. Add the nuts to the batter.

Bake

  1. Line the pans with two layers of heavy brown paper, brushing with melted butter.

  2. Fill the prepared pans with the batter and smooth the top.

  3. Decorate the top with additional nuts and fruit.

  4. Place the pans on a steel or iron griddle in the oven, with a small pan of hot water underneath.

  5. Set the oven to low heat and bake for 2.5 to 4 hours, depending on the size of the cake.

  6. Do not open the oven door for the first hour to allow the cake to season.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  3. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Almond + buttertop 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

Assorted dried fruit
Provides the bulk and chewy texture of the cake, softened by soaking in wine or juice.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter once set by the oven heat.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tender texture by creaming air into the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped to add lift and a light, open crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks and butter cream to a light texture.

The step that matters

Do not open the oven door for the first hour. Opening the door drops the oven temperature and can cause the batter's rising structure to collapse, so the cake may turn out dense or sunken.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, almond, flour, butter, sugar, egg, chocolate. 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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