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Dessert

Layer Fruit Cake

Layered fruit cake with raisins, currants, citron, pink sugar, chocolate, and egg white icing.

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 ↓

Layer Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and baking powder, then mix in the flour to form a dough.

  4. Divide the dough into two equal parts.

  5. Mix one part with the raisins, currants, and citron.

  6. Color the other part with pink sugar.

Bake the layers

  1. Bake the two doughs in four layers, alternating between the two kinds.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, make a syrup by heating 1 cup of sugar with a little water until dissolved.

  2. Grate the chocolate and whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Combine the syrup, chocolate, and whipped egg whites, then beat until stiff.

  4. Flavor with vanilla extract and spread on the layers when cold.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  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, giving the dough a light, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the fruit and layers together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the layers rise and turn out light.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and volume to the icing.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the layers they are mixed into.
Chocolate
Adds rich flavor and color to the icing.

The step that matters

Beat the icing until stiff. Whipped egg whites hold air only if they are beaten to stiff peaks and combined gently with the syrup; under-whipped or deflated whites leave a runny icing that will not set well on the layers.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, raisin, syrup, chocolate. 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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