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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with eggs, flour, currants, raisins, citron, spices, rose water, brandy, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

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

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until well mixed.

  3. Gradually add the flour, currants, raisins, citron, grated nutmeg, rose water, cinnamon, mace, and cloves, mixing thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the brandy, baking soda, and cream of tartar, then add to the fruit mixture.

  5. Mix all ingredients until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for several hours 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs bind the batter and give the cake its structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar and brandy to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, reacting with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness as the fruit softens during baking.

The step that matters

Bake for several hours until a toothpick comes out clean. Fruit cakes are dense and moist, so the centre can stay raw while the outside browns. Testing the centre with a toothpick confirms the cake is fully set before cooling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, currant, raisin, nutmeg, rose, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, currant, raisin, nutmeg, rose, cinnamon. 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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