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Dessert

Imperial Fruit Cake

A fruit cake made with raisins, citron, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, wine, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Imperial Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Chop the raisins and slice the citron.

  2. Dust the fruit with flour.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the fruit, then fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

  4. Add the wine and extract, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until thoroughly done.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, folded in whipped, lighten the crumb.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream the butter to a light base.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.
Flour
Dusting the fruit keeps the pieces suspended in the batter instead of sinking.
Wine
Adds moisture and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whites must be well beaten and folded gently so they keep their air; deflating them makes the cake dense. Stirring too hard also toughens the batter.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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