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 ↓
Fruit Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare the sugar, eggs, flour, and butter as you would for pound cake.
Cut the citron into small pieces.
Dust the raisins, currants, and citron with flour.
Place the fruit in a sifter with some flour and stir until coated.
Grease the cake pan with lard.
Bake and cool
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 1.5 to 2 hours.
Let the cake cool completely in the pan before removing.
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.
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Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,781 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,673 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,180 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
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Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,245 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Provide structure and richness as the batter sets during baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tender texture and rich flavor.
- All-purpose flour
- Builds the cake's structure as its proteins set in the oven.
- Granulated sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps browning and a tender crumb.
- Raisins
- Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
- Currants
- Add tart, chewy fruit pieces and moisture throughout the cake.
The step that matters
Dust the fruit with flour before adding it. Flour coats the fruit so it is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter and is more evenly suspended through the cake.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, butter, raisin, almond):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, butter, raisin, almond. 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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