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Dessert

Fruit Wedding-cake

A fruit cake made with flour, butter, sugar, currants, raisins, citron, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Wedding-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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and beat for five minutes.

  3. Mix in the spices, then alternately add the flour and stiffly beaten egg whites, folding gently.

  4. Stir in the brandy.

  5. Add the fruit, ensuring it is well mixed and dredged with flour, then quickly beat the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour it into two large greased molds lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for two 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lift and structure as the cake sets.
All-purpose flour
Gluten and starch form the cake's structure as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives a tender, rich crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, tender texture when creamed.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor that complements the spices and dried fruit.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites with the flour. Stiffly beaten whites hold the batter's air, which gives lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the whites and produces a dense, tough cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, currant, raisin, egg, cinnamon. 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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