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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, currants, citron, spices, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks and part of the flour, then mix in the spices and beaten egg whites.

  3. Incorporate the remaining flour, wine, and brandy, and beat thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Dredge the fruit with flour.

  2. Cover the bottom of the pan with cake mixture, add a layer of fruit, then more cake mixture, repeating until all ingredients are used, ensuring no fruit is on top.

  3. Bake for 4 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated, and coated fruit is kept from sinking.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps flavor the cake; alcohol also evaporates during baking.

The step that matters

Layering the fruit. Dredging the fruit in flour helps keep it suspended rather than sinking to the bottom. Keeping fruit off the top prevents it from burning while the cake bakes for hours.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More fruit cake recipes

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

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