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Dessert

Wedding Fruit Cake

A dense fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citron, spices, molasses, brandy, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Wedding Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit and flour

  1. Seed the raisins and chop them coarsely.

  2. Wash the currants, scrub off the stems, and dry them well.

  3. Cut the citron into small pieces.

  4. Sift the flour with all the spices and sift again to mix.

Make the batter

  1. Rub the butter and brown sugar together until creamy.

  2. Separate the egg whites and yolks; beat the yolks and add to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the molasses and brandy, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Toss a little flour with the raisins and currants, then stir the remaining flour into the mixture until smooth.

  5. Fold in the fruit and the beaten egg whites.

Bake and store

  1. Line two medium-sized cake tins with buttered paper, divide the mixture between them, and bake for 2 hours at 300°F (150°C).

  2. Store the cake in a stone or tin jar in a cool place and cut into small squares for serving.

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. Mace + cinnamontop 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
Beaten whites lighten the batter and help it rise and set structure as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and deeply flavoured.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the heavy fruit and batter together.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Raisins
Supply chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing deflates the whites and loses the air they trap, leaving a dense cake. Fold gently so the batter stays light enough to rise evenly in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, butter, brandy, flour, raisin, 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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