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Dessert

Scotch Fruit Cake

A layered fruit cake made with butter, sugar, flour, sour milk, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, lemon and vanilla extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Scotch Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Gradually add the sour milk.

  3. Mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  4. While stirring, add the sifted flour and the whipped egg whites.

  5. Flavor the mixture with lemon and vanilla extracts.

Layer and bake

  1. Flour the chopped raisins, currants, and sliced citron.

  2. In a cake pan, layer a thin layer of batter, sprinkle in some fruit, then add another layer of batter, repeating until finished with a layer of batter on top.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 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.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites lift the batter and the yolks add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter and fruit together as the cake sets.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise and keeps the crumb moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Layering the batter and fruit. Fruit is heavy and can sink to the bottom while the cake bakes. Keeping the batter layers thin and flouring the fruit helps suspend it evenly through the cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, egg, raisin, lemon. 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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