Skip to main content
Dessert

Tutti Frutti Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, water, egg whites, and candied fruits, topped with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti 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. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Mix in the water and flour, beating thoroughly for five minutes.

  4. Add the baking powder and gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. For the filling, chop the candied fruits and nuts finely.

  3. Make a boiled icing.

  4. Let the icing cool.

  5. Mix the cooled icing with the chopped fruit and nuts.

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

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. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pineapple + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lift and structure to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Candied pineapples
Adds sweetness and chewy fruit pieces to the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently to keep the batter airy and the cake from turning dense.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, walnut, 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes