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Court Cake

A fruit cake made with sugar, butter, buttermilk, eggs, flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and mixed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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

  2. Add the buttermilk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and grated nutmeg, then gradually add to the wet ingredients.

  5. Fold in the mixed fruit until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for nearly one hour or until a toothpick 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.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tenderness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for lightness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture gradually. Adding dry ingredients gradually and folding gently keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, buttermilk, flour, 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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