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Baking

White Fkuit Cake

A moist fruit cake made with coconut, almonds, raisins, currants, and citron, flavored with 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 ↓

White Fkuit 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 until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until combined.

  4. Fold in the grated coconut, chopped almonds, and dusted fruits.

  5. Stir in the brandy last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 2 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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Egg whites add structure and help the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and stays light.
Almonds
Add body, richness and a nutty flavour to the dense batter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and baking powder. Mixing flour too vigorously after it is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough. Mix only until combined so the crumb stays tender.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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