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Dessert

Mixed Fruit Cake

A sweet cake made with eggs, butter, sugar, flour, citron, preserved ginger, dates, figs, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and fig work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Mixed Fruit Cake

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. Mince all the fruit except the almonds, which should be blanched and halved.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Gradually add the flour and mix until combined.

  4. Fold in the minced fruit and almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ginger + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together208 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the batter.
Sugar
Creaming with butter traps air and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the fruit mixture.
Figs
Add moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Beating each egg in fully before the next keeps the butter and sugar emulsified and airy. Adding them all at once can cause curdling, which weakens the batter's structure and makes the final crumb coarser.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

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