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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A rich cake made with flour, sugar, butter, currants, citron, raisins, almonds, eggs, rose-water, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the raisins coarsely and shred the citron finely.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the sugar and beat until very light.

  3. Mix in the rose-water, then add the well-beaten eggs and flour.

  4. Incorporate the spices, grated lemon, and finely chopped blanched almonds.

  5. Finally, add the fruit, dredged with a little flour.

Bake

  1. Bake for 4 to 6 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. 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

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 in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness when beaten to a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter trap air when beaten light.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the batter and fruit together.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the finished cake.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and moisture throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the butter and sugar until very light. Creaming beats air into the fat and sugar, and that trapped air helps the cake rise and gives a lighter crumb. Under-beaten butter leaves a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, raisin, almond, egg, rose. 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.

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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