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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A fruit cake made with currants, raisins, candied peel, almonds, spices, butter, sugar, flour, and eggs, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Clean the currants.

  2. Stone the raisins.

  3. Blanch the almonds, then chop the blanched almonds.

  4. Cut up the candied peel.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Add the beaten yolks to the butter alternately with the flour.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Add the fruit and spices to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined cake tin.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about two hours.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites are beaten and folded in to give the cake lift, while yolks add richness and binding.
Almonds
Chopped almonds add body, a nutty flavour and a tender crumb to the cake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Currants
Dried fruit adds sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Stone raisins
Dried fruit adds sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff, and folding gently keeps that air in the batter. Stirring vigorously would deflate it, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, nutmeg, almond, raisin, butter, sugar, flour. 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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