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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, baking soda, raisins, currants, citron, brandy, wine, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it to the milk, then mix into the creamed mixture.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour.

  5. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  6. Add the remaining ingredients, ensuring the fruit is floured to prevent sinking.

Bake and frost

  1. Pour the batter into one large pan or several small pans.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  3. For frosting, use 5 tablespoons of sugar for each egg white.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Egg yolks enrich the batter and stiffly beaten whites lighten it for a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Flour gives the batter structure and, when lightly coated on fruit, helps suspend it evenly.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, butter traps air and adds richness and tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Dried fruit adds sweetness, moisture and chewy texture to the cake.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps build a light texture.

The step that matters

Flouring the fruit before folding it in. Heavy fruit sinks to the bottom of a batter that is not stiff enough to hold it. Lightly coating the pieces in flour helps them grip the batter so they stay suspended while baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, raisin, brandy. 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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