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Dessert

Mrs. Blis's Pound Fruit Cake

A buttery pound cake studded with raisins, currants, citron, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mrs. Blis's Pound 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 the batter

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

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

  3. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the rose water, ground mace, and sifted flour.

  5. Fold in the dredged raisins, currants, and sliced citron.

  6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  7. Sift the cream of tartar with a little flour and gently fold it into the egg whites.

  8. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.

  9. Combine everything and mix gently.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. Once baked, cover with icing before the cake cools.

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

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

  3. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whipped whites lighten its structure as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and sets the crumb as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the mixture to help the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lifts the heavy batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates it and leads to a dense cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, rose, flour, raisin, currant. 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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