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Dessert

Fruit or Plum Cake, No. 2

A dense cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, dried currants, raisins, citron, spices, brandy, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fruit or Plum Cake, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Butter the pan and line it with two layers of buttered parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until very smooth and light.

  2. Whisk the eggs until thick and creamy, then gradually mix them into the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with the flour.

  3. Add the ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, brandy, and wine gradually, mixing well.

  4. Flour the dried fruit before adding it to the batter to prevent it from sinking.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 5 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a light crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air that aids rising.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, moisture and richness as they set in the oven.
Dried currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Flouring the dried fruit. Dried fruit is dense and sinks toward the bottom of a thick batter during a long bake. A light coating of flour helps it grip the batter and stay suspended as the cake sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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