Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, raisins, wine, spices, and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Add the wine and mix well.

  4. Beat the eggs until very light, strain, and add them to the mixture.

  5. Mix two-thirds of the flour into the batter.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Coat the fruit with the remaining flour and add it along with the spices.

  2. Stir in the juice and grated rind of the lemon.

  3. Pour the batter into two well-greased pans lined with greased paper.

  4. Bake for 2 to 3 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten until light, they add structure and lift to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps browning.
Raisins
Add moisture, sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the sugar and butter. Beating them until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that help the cake rise and give it a fine crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense result.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, raisin, wine, sugar, egg, nutmeg. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes