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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, egg whites, baking powder, raisins, almonds, figs, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until combined.

  5. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  6. Stir in the raisins, almonds, figs, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped air and structure that help the cake rise and set light.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Almonds
Add texture and nutty flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, while vigorous stirring would deflate it and produce a denser cake.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

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