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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and a mixture of figs, dates, almonds, raisins, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Chop the figs, dates, almonds, raisins, and citron coarsely, keeping each type separate.

  3. Mix all the chopped fruit together lightly with your fingers.

  4. Sift some of the flour over the fruit and set aside.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the baking powder with the remaining flour and sift again.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar, then stir in the fruit.

  3. Finally, fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Line two medium-sized cake tins with buttered paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 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.

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. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

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

  4. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, open crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the heavy batter rises.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a firm, chewy bite among the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the cake lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, fig, sugar, flour, almond, egg, 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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