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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with sugar, butter, flour, coconut, dried fruits, spices, and eggs, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter until creamy.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Stir in the coconut, citron, raisins, figs, spices, and nuts.

  5. Combine the flour with the baking soda and add to the mixture.

  6. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites until well incorporated.

Bake

  1. Pour the thick batter into a greased cake pan and bake 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.

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. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and nuts together as the cake bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that lightens the thick batter. Stirring them in vigorously deflates that air, while gentle folding keeps the cake light and well risen.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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