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Dessert

Fruit and Feather Cake

A dense fruit cake with raisins, currants, citron, candied peel, spices, brandy, and molasses baked in layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 and Feather 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the softened butter and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup of flour with cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, mixing until smooth.

  6. Take out a little less than half of the batter and set aside.

Make the fruit cake and plain cake

  1. To the reserved batter, stir in the remaining flour, raisins, currants, citron, candied peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, brandy, and molasses.

  2. Pour the plain batter into jelly pans and bake until golden.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once baked, layer the plain cake with the fruit cake, covering each layer with jelly.

  2. Ice the top of the stacked cakes.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Eggs
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, fluffy structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the batter.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda reacts, producing gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release carbon dioxide for rising.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark colour, and a deep sweetness to the fruit batter.

The step that matters

Folding the remaining flour into the reserved batter. Overmixing develops gluten and makes the fruit cake dense and tough, while the leavening gas already formed can escape if the batter is left standing too long.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, cream, 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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