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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, browned flour, eggs, dried fruit, nuts, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, then mix in the browned flour.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Chop the nuts and mix them with the chopped fruit, then flour them.

  2. Add the floured fruit and nuts to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Stir in the brandy.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for three 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. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites lighten the batter, and yolks add richness and help bind it.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Browned flour
Provides the structure of the cake and a toasted, nutty flavor.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the dense fruit cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the dense fruit cake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps create a smooth, creamed base.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when stiffly beaten and gently folded, so overmixing or deflating them makes the cake denser and less light.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, raisin, fig, walnut. 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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