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Dessert

A Rich Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, dried fruit, nuts, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Rich 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, work the softened butter until creamy.

  2. Add the flour, sugar, and egg yolks alternately, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Beat the egg whites until very light and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Stir in the grated nutmeg, ground mace, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, and brandy.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 4 hours, covering with paper when the top begins to brown.

  3. Let the cake cool before icing it.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crust.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or deflating them while folding makes the cake dense, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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