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Dessert

Fruit or Wedding Cake

A dense, sweet cake made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar, raisins, currants, citrus, nuts, molasses, and fruit preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Fruit or Wedding Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, nutmeg, and spices, then gradually add to the egg mixture.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of water and add it just before mixing in the fruit.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, orange, walnuts, prunes, molasses, and currant jelly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for four hours, starting with a warm oven, then gradually increasing the heat for two hours, and finally baking in a moderate oven until done.

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat coating the flour and creaming air into the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed texture with the butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses and jelly to help the cake rise and darken.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a deep, slightly acidic sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda just before the fruit. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid, so delaying its addition until just before baking keeps the rise from fading before the cake sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, raisin, orange, walnut. 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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