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Dessert

Fruit Cake for a Wedding

A rich, spiced fruit cake with raisins, currants, citron, and spices baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fruit Cake for a Wedding

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cut the butter into pieces and let it soften (do not melt).

  2. Cream the softened butter, then add the sugar and stir until white.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them into the butter and sugar.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them into the mixture.

  5. Add the spices and flour, then fold in the fruit, except for the citron.

Bake

  1. Layer the citron in three parts: one near the bottom, one in the middle, and one near the top.

  2. Dip a spoon in cold water and smooth over the cake to even out the citron.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 3 to 4 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift when folded in, and yolks add richness and structure.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from deflating before the cake reaches the oven.

Swap the mace

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

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

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