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Dessert

Fruit Cake Rich

A dense fruit cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, almonds, mace, rosewater, brandy, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Rich

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. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until well combined.

  3. Add the flour and butter, beaten to a cream, and mix well.

  4. Gently fold in the egg whites, beaten to a high froth.

  5. Stir in the raisins, currants, citron, almonds, mace, rosewater, brandy, and wine.

  6. Gradually mix in the flour until fully combined.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared pans.

Bake and mature

  1. Bake for over 2 hours for thick loaves, or less for thin loaves.

  2. Allow the cake to mature for 3-4 weeks for best flavor.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter with sugar, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Butter
Creamed with the flour, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps tenderize the crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the finished cake.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to a high froth trap air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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