Name: Plain Fruit Cakes
Ingredients: 3 cups all-purpose flour; 3 ½ cups white flour (if using Graham flour, reduce by ½ cup); 3 heaping teaspoons baking powder (optional); 4 to 6 quarts of fresh berries (strawberries, huckleberries, raspberries, or cherries); sugar (for cherries, if used)

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Fruit Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 ½ cups white flour (if using Graham flour, reduce by ½ cup)
3 heaping teaspoons baking powder (optional)
4 to 6 quarts of fresh berries (strawberries, huckleberries, raspberries, or cherries)
sugar (for cherries, if used)

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Sift the baking powder and soda several times through the flour.
Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and prick well with a fork.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden.
Cool the cakes edgewise until comfortable to handle.
Split each cake in half by cutting the crust and using a fork to separate.
Place the bottom half on a plate, add prepared fruit, and top with the other half.
Let stand for 30 minutes before serving. Pass extra berries at the table.

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.

Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

White Cake431 recipes

Pound Cake373 recipes

Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes

Spice Cake344 recipes

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Plain Fruit Cakes