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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with flour, brown sugar, butter, raisins, currants, citron, almonds, nutmeg, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Add the yolks of 5 eggs, beaten lightly.

  4. Mix in the flour and the well-combined fruits.

  5. Finally, stir in the brandy.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake for 2 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating add lift, and yolks enrich the batter and help it set.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavour.
Almonds
Add body, a nutty flavour and a firmer crumb to the cake.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the mixture and leaves a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin, almond, nutmeg, brandy. 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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