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Dessert

Canadian Fruit Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, spices, flour, milk, raisins, walnuts, and citron peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Canadian 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and beaten eggs, mixing well.

  3. Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

  4. Gradually alternate adding the flour and milk to the butter mixture.

  5. Dust the fruit with a little flour to prevent sinking.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan.

  2. Bake for three hours in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake and fruit together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of cream of tartar to lift the batter as it bakes.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender while creaming.

The step that matters

Dusting the fruit with flour. Flour coats the fruit so it spreads through the batter rather than sinking to the bottom during baking. Heavy, wet fruit tends to sink when the batter is thin and the cake needs a long bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, clove, allspice, milk, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, clove, allspice, milk, flour. 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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