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Dessert

Fruit Cake— Dark

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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— Dark

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the fruit into coarse pieces and the almonds into no more than three pieces each.

  2. Roll the fruit in flour to separate it.

  3. Reserve some almonds and citron for decoration on top of the cake.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the eggs until frothy.

  3. Mix in the floured fruit.

  4. Gently stir in the remaining flour just before baking.

Bake and finish

  1. Place embers under the cake.

  2. Let it rise for three hours.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for three hours, or until a straw inserted comes out clean.

  4. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for at least two hours, or overnight if very large.

  5. Once cooled, frost the cake.

  6. Store it in a dark, cool place.

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. Raisin + flourtop 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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Almond + buttertop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift through trapped air when beaten.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the cake together.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and keep well.
Raisins
Provide moisture, sweetness and the dark fruit character of the cake.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the remaining flour just before baking. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which toughens the crumb. Folding gently keeps the cake tender and light.

Swap the mace

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

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

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