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Rich Fruit Cake

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

Rich 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.

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

  2. Separate the egg whites and yolks.

  3. Beat half of the yolks with half of the sugar.

  4. Cream the butter with the remaining sugar and mix all together.

  5. Add half of the flour, then fold in the beaten egg whites with the other half of the flour.

  6. Mix in the wine with the baking soda and add the ground spices.

  7. Dredge the fruit in flour and stir it quickly into the batter.

  8. Cut the citron into thin strips and lay them across the bottom of the pan to hold the batter together.

  9. Line the bottom of the pan with several layers of paper to prevent burning.

  10. Bake slowly for about six hours.

  11. Pour wine over the cake when baked.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, wine, flour, raisin, walnut, pineapple, pecans):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, wine, flour, raisin, walnut, pineapple, pecans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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