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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A fruit cake made with egg whites, butter, sugar, flour, milk, spices, almonds, raisins, candied fruit, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

White Fruit Cake

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. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a light foam, add cream of tartar, and whip until stiff.

  3. Sift the flour once, add baking soda and spices, and sift three times.

  4. Dredge the fruit and nuts thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. To the creamed butter and sugar, add the milk, egg whites, and flour, and stir until smooth.

  2. Add the fruit and nuts, and more flour if needed to make the batter stiff.

Bake or steam

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 1.5 hours or steam in a cooker for about 3 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they trap air and give the cake a light, open structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking, providing the cake's main structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps it rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it blends smoothly.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to a light foam and then stiff, with cream of tartar stabilising them. Under-whipped whites give a dense cake, while over-whipped whites turn dry and grainy and collapse when mixed in, losing the air that lifts the batter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, milk, cream, ginger. 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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