Skip to main content
Dessert

Directions for Making Fruit Cakes

A sweet cake made with soaked fruit, almonds, spices, and chocolate, baked in a griddle with a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Directions for Making Fruit Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fruit a day in advance and soak it in wine or grape juice.

  2. Blanch and grind the almonds, then mix with rosewater.

  3. Measure the spices and add them to the cordial and jelly without stirring.

  4. Brown the flour in the oven, then cool and measure it.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with half the sugar, then beat the yolks with the remaining sugar until light.

  2. Combine the butter mixture with the yolks, then add the cordial, jelly, and spices.

  3. Alternately mix in the beaten egg whites and half of the flour, then add the chocolate.

  4. Sift flour over the fruit, then fold it into the batter, repeating until all fruit is incorporated.

  5. Add the nuts to the batter.

Bake

  1. Line the pans with two layers of heavy brown paper, brushing the paper with melted butter.

  2. Fill the pans with the batter, smoothing the top, and decorate with nuts and fruit.

  3. Place the pans on a steel or iron griddle in a gas oven, with a pan of hot water underneath to maintain moisture.

  4. Keep the flame very low during baking.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Yolks and whites add richness and structure, with whipped whites lightening the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness and carries flavour through the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the creamed mixture hold air.
Blanched and ground almonds
Add moisture, body and nutty flavour to the batter.
Assorted fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness and colour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Keep the flame very low during baking. Low, gentle heat lets the cake set through the centre before the outside browns too much. Fruit-heavy batters are prone to scorching or cooking unevenly when the oven runs hot.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, almond, flour, butter, sugar, egg, chocolate. 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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes