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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with white sugar, flour, butter, sweet milk, currants, raisins, citron, egg whites, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and grated nutmeg.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the sweet milk.

  2. Fold in the currants, raisins, and citron.

  3. Pour the batter into two greased loaf pans.

Bake

  1. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Currant + raisintop 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 sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the cake set as it bakes, supporting its rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter, stabilising the egg whites and helping the leavening react.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruity sweetness throughout the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the dry ingredients and milk. Adding the flour mixture gradually and alternating with milk keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, raisin, egg, cream. 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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