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Dessert

Fruit Cake

Fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the sifted flour and baking soda mixture.

  4. Fold in the floured raisins, currants, and citron.

  5. Add the grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves; mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared baking pan and bake at 300°F (150°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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets during baking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten the texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved in hot water and evenly mixed in, so the leavening spreads through the batter and the cake rises evenly instead of forming dense or patchy spots.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More fruit cake recipes

White 89Black 40Christmas 29Eggless 27Molasses 23Apple 17 See all 952 →

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