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Dessert

Fruit Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, butter, flour, treacle, sugar, dried fruit, candied peel, spices, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Stir in the treacle and lemon essence.

  5. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, mixed spice, and cinnamon.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  7. Fold in the sultanas, currants, raisins, and candied peel.

  8. Add a little milk to achieve a smooth batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased cake tin and bake for about 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for a lighter texture.
Sultanas, currants and raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions helps keep the batter smooth and stops the emulsion from splitting, which would make the crumb dense and uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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