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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A light fruit cake made with butter, sugar, flour, egg whites, baking powder, citron, almonds, coconut, raisins, and fruit juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White 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

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the citron, almonds, coconut, raisins, and fruit juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake for about 60 minutes or until a toothpick 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Egg whites
Add structure and moisture to the batter, helping it set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavour that complements the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Fold in the citron, almonds, coconut, raisins, and fruit juice. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the creamed batter, so the cake stays light. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, making the crumb dense and tough.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, almond, 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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