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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, currants, raisins, citron, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

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 the batter

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

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

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined.

  6. Fold in the currants, raisins, citron, and brandy until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and smooth the top.

  2. Bake for about 1.5 to 2 hours, 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.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Creamed with sugar, it traps air that helps the cake rise and gives a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter and helping it set as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for a light texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough. Overmixing after the flour goes in develops gluten and makes the crumb dense.

Swap the mace

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

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

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