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Dessert

Japanese Fruit Cake

A fruit cake made with butter, milk, sugar, flour, spices, raisins, coconut, and lemon, baked in layers with a coconut lemon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Japanese 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg yolks and gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture, alternating with the well-beaten egg whites.

  4. Divide the batter into three parts.

Flavor and bake the layers

  1. In one part, add the cloves, cinnamon, spice, and floured raisins.

  2. Cook the layers in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil the water and add the juice and grated rind of the lemons, sugar, and coconut.

  2. Add the corn starch and cook until the mixture drops in lumps from a spoon.

  3. Spread the filling between the layers.

  4. Ice with plain white icing.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Clove + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the batter into a firm, stable crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon and coconut filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the filling with corn starch until thick. Starch only thickens fully when heated enough to swell and set, so stopping early leaves a runny filling that soaks into the layers and makes the cake soggy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, flour, egg, cinnamon, vanilla. 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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