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Dessert

Wedding Fruit Cake

A rich fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, and dried fruit, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Wedding Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth, then gradually add the sugar and beat until light.

  2. Stir in the rose water and well-beaten eggs.

  3. In a separate bowl, sift the flour with baking soda and cream of tartar.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the chopped almonds, grated nutmegs, raisins, cloves, chopped figs, mace, currants, cinnamon, and sliced citron, dredging the fruit with flour first.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake slowly for four 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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add moisture, chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit with flour before folding it in. Flour coats the heavy fruit so it is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter and is spread more evenly through the cake while it bakes.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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