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Dessert

With Twenty-four Eggs. Fruit Cake.

A fruit cake made with flour, citron, raisins, currants, butter, sugar, 24 eggs, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

With Twenty-four Eggs. 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. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and thoroughly beat the yolks.

  2. Mix the fruit, spices, and flour together.

  3. Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Bake and store

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for 5 to 6 hours for a large loaf.

  2. Store covered in a stone jar for long-lasting freshness.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness, moisture and binding.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich in flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during long baking.
Raisins
Add moisture, sweetness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.
Currants
Add moisture, tartness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Stiff whites hold air bubbles that give the heavy, fruit-filled batter lift. If they are under-beaten, the loaf will be denser, and deflating them by over-mixing loses that air.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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