Skip to main content
Dessert

Raised Fruit Cake

A yeast-leavened cake made with butter, milk, fruit, nuts, sugar, flour, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Raised 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and yeast, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the eggs, flour, baking soda, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Fold in the mixed fruit and chopped nuts.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover the mixture and let it rise overnight.

  2. In the morning, preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Bake the cake until golden brown and 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding as the batter sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, lightening the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to help it rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. The yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas. Letting the batter rise fully before baking gives a lighter, more open crumb, while skipping or shortening the rise leaves the cake dense.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes