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Dessert

White Fruit Cake

Layered cake with butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, egg whites, and a filling of figs, ginger, raisins, citron, almonds, powdered sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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White Fruit Cake

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 ↓

White 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 batter

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

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

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, alternating with the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly tins.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake the batter until done.

  2. While the cake is still hot, prepare the filling by mixing the chopped figs, ginger, raisins, citron, and almonds into the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Add powdered sugar to the filling.

  4. Add lemon juice to the filling.

  5. Mix the filling well.

  6. Spread the filling between the layers of the cake.

  7. Frost the top quickly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to add air and structure, lifting the batter and binding the cake.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crumb.
Figs
Add moisture and body to the chopped fruit filling.

The step that matters

Mix the filling into the egg whites while the cake is still hot. Beaten egg whites deflate when stirred and can cook or weep if mixed poorly, so the filling should be folded gently and spread promptly while the cake is warm and the frosting can set quickly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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