Skip to main content
Dessert

Tutti Frutti Cake

A cake made with quince jelly, raisins, nuts, coconut, sugar, egg white, and covered with boiling icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread the cake thickly with quince jelly.

  2. Layer with ground raisins, chopped nuts, and grated coconut mixed with sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg white on top.

  4. Cover the cake with boiling icing.

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 + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Nuts + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + coconuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Quince + coconuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Quince jelly
Adds sweetness and a fruity layer that moistens the cake beneath the toppings.
Egg white
Beaten egg white forms a light, foamy layer that adds structure to the topping.
Grated coconut
Adds chewy texture and mild sweetness to the filling layer.
Ground raisins
Adds concentrated sweetness and chewy body to the filling.

The step that matters

Covering the cake with boiling icing. Boiling icing is poured or spread while very hot, so it sets into a glossy, soft-crisp coating as it cools. If it cools too much before spreading, it can turn thick and uneven.

Swap the quince

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, nuts, coconut, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Quincethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, nuts, coconut, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes