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Dessert

Scotch Fruit Cake

A layered cake with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, sour milk, baking soda, lemon and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Scotch Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Gradually add the sour milk and beaten egg yolks.

  3. While stirring, incorporate the sifted flour and whipped egg whites.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the raisins by stoning and chopping them.

  2. Wash and dry the currants.

  3. Slice the citron thin.

  4. Dredge the fruit lightly with flour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the cake batter and fruit alternately in the pans, starting and ending with cake batter.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped whites lift the batter and give it an airy, light structure; yolks add richness.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake and suspended fruit together as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Layer the batter and fruit alternately, starting and ending with batter. Fruit is heavy and sinks toward the bottom of the pan. Floured fruit and layering with batter on both ends help suspend it so the cake bakes evenly rather than sinking into a dense base.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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