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Dessert

English Fruit Cake

A dense, spiced cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, dried fruit, nuts, and spices, steamed then baked.

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 ↓

English Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar, beating thoroughly.

  2. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks until thick and lemon-colored.

  3. Beat the whites until stiff and dry.

  4. Combine the yolk mixture with the butter and sugar mixture.

  5. Add the milk, currants, raisins, almonds, and flour mixed with mace, cinnamon, and baking soda.

Line and steam

  1. Line buttered pans with paper.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined pans.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Steam for 3 hours.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1½ hours.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while stiffly beaten whites add lightness and structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the fruit and nuts in place.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed butter hold air for a softer texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and moisture, and their pockets of fruit keep the cake moist.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff and dry. Stiff whites trap air that lightens a heavy, fruit-filled batter. Underbeaten whites give a dense cake, and overbeaten whites turn grainy and collapse when folded in.

Swap the currant

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

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

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