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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, almonds, citron, coconut, lemon extract, sweet milk, raisins, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 Fruit 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

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

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  5. Mix in the sweet milk and lemon extract.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Sift a little flour over the fruit and nuts, then fold them into the batter.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  3. Bake for two hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 and give a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream with butter to create a light texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and stays light.
Blanched almonds
Add body, nutty flavor and a firm texture to the crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruit and nuts. Heavy fruit and nuts sink to the bottom of the batter if they are not lightly dusted with flour first. Folding gently keeps the batter's air intact so the cake rises evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, almond, coconut, milk, raisin. 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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