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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A sweet baked cake with a sugar syrup filling containing coconut, raisins, almonds, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add water, flour, eggs, and baking powder. Mix until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into well-greased pans. Bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Combine 4 cups of sugar with a little water in a saucepan. Boil the mixture until it reaches a candy-like consistency.

  2. Pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites. Mix well.

  3. Add coconut, raisins, almonds, and figs. Stir until combined.

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. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  4. Coconut + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped into the syrup filling, giving it a light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar syrup to a candy-like consistency. The syrup must reach the right concentration before it is poured over the egg whites. Too little cooking leaves a runny filling, and too much makes it hard and grainy once it cools.

Swap the coconut

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

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

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