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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, brandy, cloves, mace, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cloves, and mace.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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 and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help the cake rise and brown.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Mixing flour in too vigorously develops gluten and can make the cake tough. Mix only until combined so the crumb stays tender.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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