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Dessert

Miss Charlotte Ely

A boiled fruit cake made with fruit cake, suet, flour, wine, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Miss Charlotte Ely

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the fruit cake, suet, flour, wine, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg in a large bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk, mixing until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for four hours in a pot of simmering water.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the cake sets during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the cake moist and tender.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that gives the cake its body and structure.
Fruit cake
Supplies the fruit, sweetness and main flavour of the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Boil for four hours in a pot of simmering water. The pudding must cook gently and steadily for the full time so the eggs and flour set through the centre. Water that boils too hard or drops too low can leave the cake uneven or underdone.

“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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