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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, dried fruits, spices, chocolate, and butter, baked until done.

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

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, mix the eggs, currants, raisins, citron, dates, figs, chocolate, black sugar, flour, brandy, butter, walnuts, and almonds.

  2. Add the mace, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the mixture and stir until well combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for several hours until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 as they set during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and nuts together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Black sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Brandy
Adds aroma and moisture to the batter.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and moisture from the dried fruit.

The step that matters

Bake for several hours until a toothpick comes out clean. Dense fruit cakes hold a lot of moisture, so they can look set on top while the center is still wet. Testing the center with a toothpick confirms the batter has fully set before cooling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raisin, dates, fig, chocolate, sugar, flour. 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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