Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, flour, butter, raisins, currants, citron, brown sugar, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until frothy.

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and flour to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in 1 tablespoon of boiling water and add it to the mixture.

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and help bind the batter together.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and moisture and helps browning.
Raisins
Folded in as dried fruit, adding chewy texture and sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda needs to be dissolved evenly in the liquid so it spreads through the batter; undissolved pockets can cause uneven rising and patches of bitterness or dense spots.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, butter, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, clove. 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 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipes