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Dessert

President's Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with raisins, dried fruit, nuts, and spices baked at low temperature.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

President's 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. 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 your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Gradually add the flour, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, grape jelly, citron, cherries, melted chocolate, crystallized pineapple, almonds, pecans, grape juice, cinnamon, and allspice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 2 to 3 hours, or 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.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Grape + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Raisin + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Grape + allspicetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together753 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and nuts together.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the batter.
Pecans
Add fat, crunch and a toasty flavor as they bake.
Almonds
Add body, nutty flavor and a moist, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Baking low and slow. At 300°F the batter must bake long enough for heat to reach the dense center without the outside scorching. Checking with a toothpick in the middle confirms the cake is fully set before cooling.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, raisin, flour, grape, chocolate, pineapple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, raisin, flour, grape, chocolate, pineapple. 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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