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Baking

White Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, flour, candied cherries, citron, almonds, lemon juice, egg whites, and almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and shred the almonds and slice the citron thin.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, gradually adding the flour mixed and sifted with baking soda, then add the lemon juice.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding the sugar.

  3. Combine the two mixtures and add the fruit and almond extract.

Bake

  1. Bake in a deep pan at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg whites hold their stiff, glossy form.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the lemon juice to help the cake rise.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness, moisture and bright color to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Stiff egg whites hold air that gives lift. Overmixing or deflating them makes the cake dense and heavy, so combine gently.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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