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Dessert

Honey Fruit Cake No

A cake made with honey, butter, eggs, flour, baking soda, spices, and dried fruits such as raisins, citron, cranberries, pineapple, apricots, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Honey Fruit Cake No

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook cranberries, pineapples, apricots, and apples in honey until soft.

  2. Remove fruits from honey and dry in a very slow oven (300°F / 150°C).

  3. Add a little water to the honey used for cooking cranberries.

  4. Mix the cooked fruits with the remaining honey to reach the total amount needed.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Ginger + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides sweetness and moisture, and helps soften and preserve the cooked fruit.
Eggs
Add structure and set the cake as they coagulate during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift and lighten the batter as the cake bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture.

The step that matters

Drying the cooked fruit in a very slow oven. Fruit that is still wet or syrupy adds excess moisture to the batter, which can make the cake dense and gummy. Drying at a low temperature removes surface liquid gently, so the fruit keeps its shape and the cake bakes evenly.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, honey, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, cardamom):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, honey, butter, egg, cinnamon, clove, cardamom. 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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