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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, fruit, brandy, and spices, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond 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 ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, alternating with the flour and milk.

  3. Mix well, then add the prepared fruit, essences, and brandy.

  4. Finally, stir in the baking powder.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into greased and lined cake tins.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 to 3 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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 sets the cake crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that is creamed with the sugar.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and lightens.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming aerates the batter.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, richness and a tender, dense texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking powder last. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it is wet and it loses power if the batter sits. Folding it in at the end and getting the cake into the oven promptly keeps the rise even.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, currant, egg, brandy, almond. 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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